Blue Lines

Background

"We worked on Blue Lines for about eight months, with breaks for Christmas and the World Cup," said 3D, "but we started out with a selection of ideas that were up to seven years old. Songs like 'Safe from Harm' and 'Lately' had been around for a while, from when we were The Wild Bunch, or from our time on the sound systems in Bristol. But the more we worked on them, the more we began to conceive new ideas too – like, 'Five Man Army' came together as a jam."

Blue Lines is generally considered the first trip hop album, although the term was not widely used before 1994.

The album reached No. 13 on the UK Albums Chart; sales were limited elsewhere. A fusion of electronic music, hip hop, dub, '70s soul and reggae, it established Massive Attack as one of the most innovative British bands of the 1990s and the founder of trip hop's Bristol Sound.

Music critic Simon Reynolds stated that the album also marked a change in electronic/dance music, "a shift toward a more interior, meditational sound. The songs on Blue Lines run at 'spliff' tempos – from a mellow, moonwalking 90 beats per minute ... down to a positively torpid 67 bpm."

The group also drew inspiration from concept albums in various genres by artists such as Pink Floyd, Public Image Ltd., Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock and Isaac Hayes.

Structure

Blue Lines featured breakbeats, sampling, and rapping on a number of tracks, but the design of the album differed from traditional hip hop. Massive Attack approached the American-born hip hop movement from an underground British perspective and also incorporated live instruments into the mixes. It features the vocals of Shara Nelson and Horace Andy, along with the rapping of Tricky Kid. Blue Lines proved to be popular in the club scene, as well as on college radio stations.

The font used on the cover of the album is Helvetica Black Oblique. Del Naja has acknowledged the influence of the inflammable material logo used on the cover of Stiff Little Fingers' album Inflammable Material.

Daddy G said about the making of the album:

Reception

In a contemporary review of Blue Lines, Dele Fadele of NME hailed the album as "the sleekest, deadliest, most urbane, most confounding LP 1991 has yet seen", writing that Massive Attack "put current changes on the dancefloor in perspective and map out blueprints for what must surely come next" and that "after Blue Lines the boundaries separating soul, funk, reggae, house, classical, hip-hop and space-rock will be blurred forever." Select's Andrew Harrison similarly complimented the album's diverse mix of styles and called it "a record to transcend every boundary". Robert Christgau was more reserved in his praise, giving the album a three-star honorable mention, which indicated "an enjoyable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well treasure". He cited "One Love" and "Be Thankful for What You've Got" as highlights and jokingly wrote, "from soul ii skank, those postindustrial blues got them down".

According to Acclaimed Music, a site which uses statistics to numerically represent critical reception, Blue Lines is the 37th best-received album of all time, and third best-received of the 1990s. In 1997, Blue Lines was named the 21st greatest album of all time in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV, Channel 4, The Guardian and Classic FM. The following year, Q readers placed it at number 58 in its list of the "100 Greatest Albums Ever", and in 2000, the album was voted at number 9 in the magazine's poll of the "100 Greatest British Albums Ever". In 2003, the album was ranked number 395 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Pitchfork Media ranked it at number 85 in its list of "The Top 100 Albums of the 1990s". The track "Unfinished Sympathy" has also been singled out for praise, earning a BRIT Award nomination for the best single of 1991 and being hailed by BBC Music as "one of the most moving pieces of dance music ever, able to soften hearts and excite minds just as keenly as a ballad by Bacharach or a melody by McCartney."

Stuart Bailie of BBC Northern Ireland stated that, "It was soul music. But it had bold, symphonic arrangements. It featured samples of the Mahavishnu Orchestra going 'hey, hey hey, hey.' It had funky breaks and an emotional power that was hard to figure. It sounded anxious and lost. But there was a grandeur in the music also. People who came across the record became obsessed, spinning it endlessly." "This album is chill music for me – music to write to," said author Chuck Palahniuk. "I'm writing short stories to this right now. I put this on repeat, something Andy Warhol used to do. He'd put singles on and play them unendingly to the point where the language would break down, and he would paint to that trance-like repetition."

Track listing

All tracks written by in part by Massive Attack (Marshall, Vowles, Del Naja).

Personnel

1. "Safe from Harm"
2. Shara Nelson: vocals
3. Recorded at Coach House, Bristol
4. Mixed at Matrix, London
5. Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
6. "One Love"
7. Horace Andy: vocals
8. Recorded at Coach House, Bristol
9. Mixed at Konk Studios, London
10. Mix engineer: Bryan Chuck New
11. "Blue Lines"
12. Massive Attack and Adrian "Tricky" Thaws: vocals
13. Recorded at Eastcote Studios, London
14. Engineer: Kevin Petri
15. Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
16. Bass guitar: Paul Johnson
17. "Be Thankful for What You've Got"
18. Tony Bryan: vocals
19. Recorded at Cherry Bear Studios
20. Mixed at Matrix, London
21. Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
22. "Five Man Army"
23. Massive Attack, Horace Andy, Adrian "Tricky" Thaws, and Claude "Willie Wee" Williams: vocals
24. Recorded at Eastcote Studios, London
25. Engineer: Kevin Petri
26. Mixed at Matrix, London
27. Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
28. "Unfinished Sympathy"
29. Shara Nelson: vocals
30. Recorded at Coach House, Bristol, and Abbey Road Studios, London
31. Strings engineer: Hayden
32. Mixed at Matrix, London
33. Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
34. Strings arranged and conducted by Wil Malone
35. Leader: Gavyn Wright
36. "Daydreaming"
37. Massive Attack, Adrian "Tricky" Thaws, and Shara Nelson: vocals
38. Recorded at Cherry Bear Studios
39. Mixed at Konk Studios and Roundhouse, London
40. Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom
41. "Lately"
42. Shara Nelson: vocals
43. Recorded and mixed at Coach House, Bristol
44. Mix engineer: Bryan Chuck New
45. "Hymn of the Big Wheel"
46. Horace Andy: vocals
47. Neneh Cherry: backing vocals, additional arrangement
48. Michael "Mikey General" Taylor : backing vocals
49. Recorded at Coach House, Bristol, and Hot Nights, London
50. Mixed at Matrix, London
51. Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom