1993: directed by Dwight Clarke

The first images we get in this video are of extraordinarily vivid green - it's the English countryside! You can almost smell it! You can almost smell the inquisitive young goat who rates the first close-up!

Next, though, is Damon, and he's lying supine in the vivid grass, exactly as if he'd been knocked unexpectedly unconscious. Brown polo shirt, jeans, and loafers - much more realistic than some of the get-ups he sports in these videos. Then he's up, but squatting down, and he begins to sing the verse and do strange-ish things with his hands. Damon stands up, and the camera pans across Dave lost in his own pastoral freakout, man. Damon keeps on gesturing weirdly. Graham, hiding against a tree, hasn't got his glasses on and he looks well scary. And mustard is not his colour.

The camera swirls out, and now Blur are all sitting in the meadow with the wood behind them, and... lo and behold! The vision of Steven Alexander James barefoot and in shorts! Lying on the grass kind of helplessly blinking as if to say "Take me now before I sober up!" It's all black T-shirt and belly and blissed-out expression. It's just not fair.

picture stolen from Alexland.

The cameraman adds a pink filter, immediately making it almost identical to Lush's "De-Luxe" video (the UK version, apparently, according to this link, which has only the far inferior US version). Anyway, if you haven't seen it (and I only know a few people who have), half the screen gets to be various shades of pink, which, when contrasted with the light bouncing off a grassy lawn in summer, gives a super neat-o aurora borealis effect. I think it's supposed to suggest sunset, but instead, it's just trippy. The Viewer is advised to ignore it and instead concentrate on what the could be the reason for Graham's hostile expression.

In fact the whole band looks a little rough around the edges, with the notable exception of Alex, who looks very well indeed. Perhaps they celebrated the new video a tad excessively the night before filming was to commence.

Damon flops back onto the grass, nearly squishing a helpless bunny rabbit unlucky enough to be within his turn radius. Alex chews grass and eyes his surroundings suspiciously, jealously protecting his Bournemouth's Hunkiest Hottie 1993 trophy, no doubt. Perhaps he has seen the writing on the wall.

And the countryside is full of many wonders, including horses, the aforementioned fuzzie bunnies, spiders, more horses, a pop band, a snail, and more fuzzie bunnies, and the same pop band, and then a squirmy wormy worm. (Graham has it, of course. Graham is the sort to play with worms.) There are waterfalls and wildflowers and lakes and trees and Graham has his top off and - oh, let's go to the country now, could we, please?

CUTE FACTOR: pretty good, between haircut addict Alex James, and Graham with no shirt. Dave does not look at all well, and Damon's got the pixie thing going on, but... he's still working on it.
VIDEO QUALITY: Dwight Clarke has also directed videos for Radiohead, looks like in the same georgraphical area. It's subtly psychadelic pastoral. A thousand times better than most videos of the era. Yet it does not rock me.
FUCKED UP FACTOR: looks a bit "day after"
OVERALL GRADE: B-