Damon Albarn has said he’s “pissed off” with the The Rolling Stones for their “nonsense” involvement with Hackney and “objectification” of Sydney Sweeney.
The Blur frontman spoke about the legendary band in a new interview with French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, where he was asked about his thoughts on their new album ‘Hackney Diamonds’.
“This really annoyed me” he said, “because my family lives in Hackney and the way they showed up at the Hackney Empire venue really pissed me off. They’ve never did a thing in Hackney, they’ve never played there, never contributed to anything. They just showed up. It’s all nonsense.
Albarn also expressed his irritation with their song ‘Angry’, whose music video features Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney, who Albarn thought was “objectified”.
“I listened to their new song and watched this horrible music video showing them at different stages of their lives on billboards. And this young woman objectified. What the hell is this? There’s something completely disconnected.”
When asked about whether Albarn would be “80 years old, on billboards capitalizing on your past glory”, he responded: “There’s no chance and I’ll tell you why.”
“I did all sorts of things, whereas they’ve never been anything other than The Rolling Stones,” he explained. “I love the idea of devoting your life to one thing, in search of the sublime. But the truth is, they’ve became worse. Worse at persisting to stay themselves. That’s something I don’t understand. Making exactly the same music but not that good. There must be no joy in doing something like this.”
NME reviewed ‘Hackney Diamonds’, in which we said: “Over the years, the Stones have often been accused of flippancy but they have rarely been shallow. These tunes continue to demonstrate that knack for bottling the core anxieties of the human experience – whatever age you are.”
Elsewhere in the Inrockuptibles interview, Albarn announced that it was time to “wrap up” Blur, saying: “It’s too much for me”. “It was the right thing to do and an immense honour to play these songs again, spend time with these guys, make an album, blah-blah-blah,” he said.
“I’m not saying I won’t do it again, it was a beautiful success, but I’m not dwelling on the past.”
Instead, Albarn is reportedly working on “opera which will be presented in Paris next year,” as well as reuniting with Jamie Hewlett in India to “start working on a new Gorillaz album.”