Charmless Man
"Charmless Man" is a song by English alternative rock band Blur and is the fourth track on their fourth studio album, The Great Escape. It was released on 29 April 1996 as the fourth and final single from that album, charting at number 5 in the UK Singles Chart. The title is likely a play on the song "This Charming Man" by English band The Smiths.
Speaking in December 1996, Damon Albarn said, "'Charmless Man' was the end of something... it was the end of British pop. For us, anyway". He also commented that the song would be suitable in a musical.
The inspiration for the song came from when Damon Albarn was visiting his grandmother in Lincolnshire. He stopped off at Grantham railway station and when inside the gentlemen's toilet, he noticed a piece of graffiti on a similar theme to the song's title.
Promotional video
Podcasts:
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by Blur
Charmless Man
by: BlurI met him in a crowded room
Where people go to drink away their gloom
He sat me down and so began
The story of a charmless man
Educated the expensive way
He knows his claret from a beaujolais
I think he'd like to have been Ronnie Kray
But then nature didn't make him that way
He thinks his educated airs those family shares
Will protect him, that you will respect him
He moves in circles of friends who just pretend that they like him
He does the same to them and when you put it all together
There's the model of a charmless man
He knows the swingers and their cavalry
Says he can get in anywhere for free
I began to go a little cross eyed
And from this charmless man I just had to hide
He talks at speed he gets nose bleeds
He doesn't see his days are tumbling down upon him
Yet he tries so hard to please he's just so keen for you to listen
But no-one is listening and when you put it all together
There's the model of a charmless man
He thinks his educated airs, those family shares
Will protect him, that you will respect him
Yet he tries so hard to please he's just so keen for you to listen
But no-one is listening and when you put it all together