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The Ballad of Darren is the ninth studio album by English rock band Blur. It was released on 21 July 2023 by Parlophone and Warner Records. The album's songs were written by frontman Damon Albarn in 2022 while on tour with Gorillaz, and composed by Albarn and the rest of the band. It was produced by James Ford at Studio 13 in London and Devon. It is Blur's first album since The Magic Whip, and their shortest album, with a runtime under 40 minutes. The album's artwork features a 2004 photograph of a man swimming alone in the Gourock Outdoor Pool in Gourock, Scotland, taken by Martin Parr. Its title refers to Darren "Smoggy" Evans, the band's longtime bodyguard. The Ballad of Darren received critical acclaim. It became the band's seventh consecutive album to debut at number one in the UK. It also topped the charts in Belgium, Ireland, Scotland and Switzerland, and became the band's first album to reach the Top 10 on the Top Album Sales chart in the US, reaching #8. The album was promoted by the singles "The Narcissist", "St. Charles Square" and "Barbaric", as well as a global tour. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bal...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
