I like Blur and Parklife, and I lived in Britain in 1994 when it came out (I was 12) - my parents are English but I was raised mostly in the US. I don't think the UK in 94 and the US today draw any parallels - the UK's economy was in broad expansion mode for the first time in years and unemployment was down. In fact, the thing people love to ignore (especially among people my age I meet at parties who love to argue about what they do not know while drunk) is that the economic policy of the UK transitioned in consensus. New Labour would be like Clinton admitting outwardly that he is a New Democrat and that the Republicans were right on free trade. They didn't sell anyone out until the Iraq War - that was unconscionable, but mind you, the Tories were the main opponents. In the 90's, people simply got tired of tabloid scandals and seeing the same old frumpy Tories running the country - almost 20 years of tea cosy Middle England ideals were crushed instantly with a string of scandals. All that Tony Blair did to raise anyone's hopes was to instill competence and technocratic application of what was mostly policy begun under Thatcher.

And I don't think it's fair to call Thatcher "mean", especially when you look at the past 8 years. Matthew Marcus made it sound like it was Pinochet or something - it was nothing like that. Thatcher was one of a handful of MP's to vote for decriminaliz(s)ing gay sex back in the 60's. And I don't want to speak for Blur themselves, but I do believe they all grew up in middle class circumstances, certainly not from the Wirral and Staffordshire like my extended family. I suppose maybe people aren't aware of it over here in the US, but things were so crazy in British politics in the 80's. Had I been a voter, I would probably have voted SPD or Liberal but Conservative a close second - Labour was pretty much unfit to run the country for most of the 80's. I don't think anyone, liberal or not, wants 80% tax rates.

The UK's "shake up", similar to our recent election, was in 1979. If people thought the rust belt and the 70's and 80's were bad here, they were much worse in the UK.

So there was no shaking up like there is right now - I imagine that Blair was barely on the mind of anyone until after 1995 (although even I remember being taken by his extremely pensive and sympathetic accent and manner of speech)

The pessimism in Parklife would have happened regardless. If you're not from the small minority that sends their children to Eton or lives in towns like Elstree or the Chalfonts or anywhere in Buckinghamshire, you likely had spent the last decade affected in some way by the decline of the economy, and neither right nor left had managed to solve it. Americanization and the general post-modern malaise, millenial apathy, and the secret fondness of London, all of that is something universally shared all over the developed world.