If only one song had to be chosen to explain why the 1990s remain the decade of longing even for younger generations, then it should be Blur's "Girls & Boys".

A cheap, beautiful disco beat, which appeals to indie rock fans and clubbers alike, meets a fundamentally ironic attitude and a catchy text about promiscuity and summer vacation, which foisted some specific cheekiness on the bellowing crowd, which, to top it all off, had to be sung along.

There's a few keyboard notes first, followed by a drum machine beat and a downright funky, hypnotic bass line before Damon Albarn's vocals begin.

He tells of simple, X-rated summer fun in a holiday resort and states of emergency that, despite the police and crowds, seem more exciting than threatening (after all, we are in the nineties, the end of the story is within reach): "Street's like a jungle / so call the police / following the herd down to greec

e",

bandleader Damon Albarn sings about the carefree, because - as it should turn out - consistently unintelligent summer vacation.

In the accompanying video, the band stands in front of a blue screen over which young people slide down water slides.

The so-called fun society, as was critically heard from teachers and parents at the time, is at its peak, and it doesn't stop at private relationships either: "Love in the 90's is paranoid / On sunny beaches / Take your chances / Looking for…”

Which gender is it about?

"Girls & Boys" was the first single released from Parklife, the band's third album, released in 1994.

Damon Albarn came up with the idea for the song while on a summer vacation with his then-girlfriend, Elastica singer Justine Frischmann.

The chosen location was the Spanish city of Magaluf, a holiday destination particularly popular with young Britons, known for its “lively and rather rough nightlife”, as the Mallorca-ABC site nobly puts it.

As Damon Albarn put it less poshly at the time: "All these guys and all these gals meet at the bar, it just gets copulated." Albarn emphasized that his perspective on the song is that of an observer;

a moral evaluation is not involved.

Sure, you can hear the fine mockery, but also the fascination that comes from such a wild partying,

Finally, the chorus sings about a scene in which the eponymous genders present rather vague sketches for all sorts of possible foreign and self-interpretations of identity: "Girls who are boys / Who like boys to be girls / Who do boys like they're girls / Who do girls like they're boys".

The English language is remarkably playful, in which boys who like girls quickly turn into boys who want girls like boys, who have sex with boys as if they were girls, and so on.

It remains to be seen whether the average party crowd in Magaluf, at Ballermann or elsewhere was just as tolerant of the gender puzzles proclaimed here, but one thing is clear: if you want to party to this song, you have to sing it along.

And these lines are incomparably catchy with their clumsy emphasis on girls and boys and vice versa.

The ping-pong culminates in a consistently ambiguous "Always should be someone you really love", whereby in the "loooooove" for a long moment, depending on the reading, different subsets of nonsense and Dada, smug cool and maybe even a little melancholy culminate.