Blur
Anniversary Box Set
Play Anniversary Box Set
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AMG Review of Anniversary Box Set
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
All Music GuideReleased in the summer of 1999, a few months after 13 came out, Anniversary Box Set rounds up the 22 singles Blur released in the '90s, beginning with "She's So High" and ending with "No Distance Left to Run," all presented in a zip-up case. (In the case of individual volumes of multi-part singles, two singles are jammed together as a single single.) This is not for practical listening, as it does require swapping out 22 CDs to listen to it in sequence, but it's a way to collect the lion's share of prime Blur rarities. Best of these is the "Popscene" single, as that genre-defining song appeared on no proper Blur album in the U.K. (it didn't show up on the subsequent The Best of Blur, but it did show up on the U.S. version of Modern Life is Rubbish), but there are also plenty of excellent B-sides that make this worthwhile, such as the covers of "Daisy Bell" and "Let's All Go Down the Strand" from the Sunday Sunday EP, the swirling Euro-disco of "People in Europe," the sprightly "Universal" tie-in "Utranol" and tense "No Monsters in Me," the excellent "Country House" B-side "One Born Every Minute," the weary "Beetlebum" flip "All Your Life," and some superb live Peel sessions. All of this is necessary for hardcore Blur fans, and those who haven't been buying the CD singles all along would do nicely to get them all in this box.
 "Anniversary Box Set")
