This stunning 1993 performance of Blur's For Tomorrow will give you the chills...

19 April 2026, 10:00

Blur's Damon Albarn in 1993 — Watch this incredible Blur footage from 1993. Picture: Mick Hutson/Redferns/Getty

Celebrate 33 years of the Britpop band's single, with their iconic 1993 Finsbury Park performance.

Blur’s second album, Modern Life Is Rubbish, was released on 10th May 1993 and marked a huge turning point for the band, featuring the epic but reflective lead single For Tomorrow, which was released just over a month later on 19th April.

To celebrate the song's 33rd anniversary this weekend, we're winding the clock back to the moment Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon gave a rousing performance of the single at Finsbury Park.

Watch it here:

Damon and Graham acoustic "For Tomorrow"

Read more:

If you're thinking that the crowd look a little unenthused, it's because in 1993 Blur weren't one of the UK's biggest bands and the word Britpop had barely been coined.

The acoustic performance came in the middle of a star-studded gig at the North London park, which was held to raise money for Xfm's licence and. It included sets from Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Sugar and culminated in a headline performance from The Cure.

Blur’s debut LP Leisure had been issued in 1991 to mild acclaim and had spawned the Top 10 hit There’s No Other Way.

The “Funky Drummer” shuffle and the pudding bowl haircuts led many people to file Blur under the label of “Baggy Wannabees”, and the next single, Bang, made it to an underwhelming No 24 in the UK charts. The next year, Blur embarked on an ill-tempered US tour and their raucous one-off single Popscene stiffed at the bottom end of the Top 40.

When they returned to the UK, they found their old mates Suede had stolen their thunder and work on their second album ground to a halt.

So it was time for a new manifesto: reject the loud, droning guitars of American grunge and embrace all that was great in British pop. The Kinks and early Pink Floyd were the inspirations, rather than Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

The result was Modern Life Is Rubbish - initially greeted with some suspicion due to the overtly “British” images that accompanied the record, it essentially paved the way for Britpop.

30 odd years later, and we reckon it was a risk that paid off, don't you?