" Blurry" is a song by American rock band Puddle of Mudd. It was released on October 16, 2001, as the second single from the band's debut album Come Clean (2001). It was 2002's most successful rock song in the United States, topping the Billboard Mainstream Rock and Modern Rock Tracks charts as well as their year-end listings. "Blurry" also found success outside the US, reaching the top 20 in Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
Background
Puddle of Mudd played small shows in the Kansas City area for most of the 1990s with little mainstream success.
However, singer Wes Scantlin got a demo tape to
Limp Bizkit singer
Fred Durst when Limp Bizkit were in town on October 12, 1999, on the Family Values Tour, and Durst's label
Flawless Records signed him to a recording contract. Unimpressed with Scantlin's bandmates, Flawless Records scrapped them all,
rebuilt the group with musicians Scantlin had never seen before, and flew him out to Los Angeles in late 2000 to record with them. He spent his days fiddling with his acoustic guitar in a hotel room on Hollywood Boulevard, where he reworked a previous Puddle of Mudd song called "Electron Moon" into "Blurry".
“’Blurry’ was basically about being flown to freaking Los Angeles and y’know, I didn't have any friends so they had put me into a hotel room,” Scantlin told American Songwriter. “I didn't know anybody at all. And I was just missing my family and son, I missed my grandma and stuff.”
Composition
The song is written in the key of
E-flat minor with a moderately slow
tempo of 78 beats per minute. The song follows a chord progression of C–D–Em, and the vocals in the song span from D
3 to A
4.
Commercial performance
"Blurry" is Puddle of Mudd's most successful song, reaching the number-one spot on the
Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks and Hot Modern Rock Tracks charts for 10 and nine weeks, respectively. This soon propelled the single to mainstream success, reaching the number five spot on both the
Billboard Hot 100 Airplay
and
Billboard Hot 100
[Joel Whitburn (2004). The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, 8th Edition (Billboard Publications), page 510.] and number three on the Pop Songs chart. "Blurry" was the eighth-most played song on radio in Canada in 2002.
The song is also the band's highest selling U.S. single ever, with sales of 753,000 copies, as of 2010.
Additionally, the song's writers, Wes Scantlin,
Doug Ardito, and Jimmy Allen, won
ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) Song of the Year and Pop Song of the Year for this tune.
"Blurry" also won two
Billboard Awards in 2002, for Modern Rock Track of the Year and Rock Track of the Year. It also received the Kerrang! Award for Best Single. "Blurry" reached number eight on the UK Singles Chart on its release there in June 2002, becoming the band's highest-charting single in the United Kingdom.
Music video
The music video shows Scantlin playing with his son Jordan, interspersed with shots of the band playing in a garage. Towards the end of the video, a man and a woman (presumably Jordan's mother and stepfather) are shown driving away with Jordan in the back seat as Wes watches sadly. The video was directed by
Limp Bizkit vocalist
Fred Durst.
Accolades
| + Accolades for "Blurry"
! Publication
! Region
! Accolade
! Year
! Rank |
| AOL Radio | United States | "Top Alternative Songs of the Decade – 2000s" | 2009 | 3 |
Track listings
Australian CD single
-
"Blurry" (radio edit)
-
"Abrasive"
-
"Nobody Told Me"
European CD single
-
"Blurry" (album version)
-
"All I Ask For"
UK cassette single
-
"Blurry"
-
"All I Ask For" (demo)
UK CD1
-
"Blurry"
-
"All I Ask For" (demo)
-
"Out of My Head" (live)
-
"Blurry" (video)
UK CD2
-
"Blurry"
-
"Control" (live)
-
"Bring Me Down" (live)
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Certifications
Release history
Covers
-
P.M. Dawn appeared on NBC's Hit Me, Baby, One More Time, performing "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss", and covered Puddle of Mudd's "Blurry". Despite the fact that Prince Be was still suffering the effects of this stroke, they beat Animotion, Missing Persons, Juice Newton and Shannon to claim the $20,000 charitable prize, which they contributed to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, as Prince Be was a diabetic. In June 2019, P.M. Dawn collaborated with musician Tommy Marz on a studio version of Blurry dedicated to the memory of Attrell Cordes
-
On May 21, 2021, country rock singer-songwriter Hardy released a cover of "Blurry" with an accompanying music video on YouTube.
Uses in media
-
This song is used as the title theme for the video game .
-
This song is used in the trailer for the 2003 film A Man Apart.
-
On June 21, 2011, this song was released as downloadable content for the rhythm game Rock Band 3.
-
The song is used in the American television show The Secret Life of the American Teenager in the series finale.
External links
