How do you impress your fans with your first album in over a decade? How about adding the slightly absurd elements of daily life in China? That's what the British rock band Blur did by enlisting Chinese square dancers for their newest music video.
The music video for the band's new single, Lonesome Street, from their upcoming album The Magic Whip, stars San Francisco's Phoenix Fly Line Dancing Group.
It begins with a male dancer performing a solo routine in front of a curtain, which eventually collapses to show a gym full of people dancing along to the jubilant tune.
Blur's Chinese fans are no strangers to the choreography, as it can be found in public squares all around the country every day. However, they received the video with mixed feelings.
"You haven't released a single album in a decade, and now you give me this," complained @Aconga, a user of Sina weibo.
Another netizen named @enieni angrily expressed willingness to donate money to the band's music video budget.
There are also many fans that found the idea interesting. "Keep dancing and the street will no longer be lonesome," wrote user @deeplysleep.
Some even consider the band a potential game changer for square dance. "I won't complain about the noise of square dance if dama (middle-aged women) dance along to this song," @AshleeGuo said.
The most impressive comment was made by @wocengguonile, who was clearly not fooled by the fictitious upbeat dance steps. "The clip is designed to reflect the emptiness and loneliness of urban middle-aged and elderly people by contrasting this to the joyous square dance."
This is not the only song on the album that incorporates Chinese culture.
The video for the single, Go Out, includes serious and helpful instructions from a Chinese woman for delicious-looking no-churn vanilla ice cream. The video was released during Chinese New Year and its subtitles are entirely in Chinese.
The subtitles are all about the recipe and don't match the lyrics, which read: I'm getting sad alone, dancing with myself; greedy go-getter goal; the luxury of stealth.
The band's passion for both ice cream and Chinese is reflected in the neon–signs on the album cover, which features an ice cream cone and rough Chinese translations of "Blur" and "The Magic whip".
The name of the single There are Too Many of Us was translated into Chinese in its video as well, although the translation is too literal to be understood by Chinese people.
The Magic Whip will be released on April 27, 2015. It is Blur's first album with new material since 2003's Think Tank . In a recent interview, frontman Damon Albarn revealed that the album was inspired by Asia and recorded in Hong Kong where the band was stranded for five days following a cancelled show.
Blur, formed in 1989, was one of the most successful bands of the 1990s in Britain and an important part of the Britpop movement. With seven studio albums plus two compilations, the band has won a total of five BRIT Awards, and was twice nominated for the Mercury Music Award.
