Photo: WENN.com
"Love in the nineties, it's paranoid," asserts Damon Albarn in the middle of 'Girls and Boys', delivering what has transformed from a snapshot of society into a history lesson begging the question, what is love like now?
Clearly bouyed by a cynicism evaporating fortnight of gold medals, world records and The Mobot, the Hyde Park audience are filled with love for their city. As luck would have it, there are few bands who deal with matters of the heart through the filter of England's capital quite like Blur. 'Girls and Boys' gives way to 'London Loves', 'Tracy Jacks' and 'Jubilee' in an opening salvo as British as Boris Johnson dancing to The Spice Girls somewhere across the city.
Of course, Blur always looked out across their land with an arched eyebrow and it remains amusing to hear 60,000 people faithfully bellowing 'Parklife' and 'Country House' with no hint of the irony stitching its Union Jack lining together. You can only assume Graham Coxon's disdain for the populist section of the Blur back catalogue increases every time he sees Phil Daniels bowling round the corner.
Blur are wearing Graham's influence nicely in 2012, however, with the scuzzy, distorted buzz of 'Popscene', 'Advert' and a gloriously extended 'Beetlebum' taking Blur back to the parallel universe in which they were rivals not to Oasis but Sonic Youth. It is here, though, that the much discussed volume issues in Hyde Park really come in to play. If you don't see the value in making one of the most talented guitarists of his generation go for it in front of 60,000 fans audible beyond the front five rows then you simply have no business staging live music events.
Luckily for Blur (or should that be the concert organisers?) their fifth band member is the audience and singalong moments like 'Tender' and 'No Distance Left To Run' were never going to float by with a whisper. We do hope the Hyde Park choir's rendition of 'This Is A Low' was loud enough to keep the local residents up past their usual bedtime just one time.
Questions remain over Blur's future but constant speculation over what lies ahead misses the point of what this night was all about - the unlikely unison between one of London's finest bands and the culmination of possibly London's finest hour. The sense of achieving something great, as shown inside the Olympic Stadium by Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and the rest of Team GB is in laced in the DNA of 'The Universal', Blur's swansong tonight.
As Damon Albarn sings "It really, really could happen," under a huge recreation of The Westway, the brilliant realisation that it already did for both athletes and the band displays how Blur have not just reformed but managed to do so whilst providing the perfect soundtrack to a city which continues to inspire each and every day.
