Damon Albarn on Oasis rivalry: 'I was never gonna beat Noel'

Damon Albarn has revisited the age-old rivalry between Blur and fellow Britpop legends Oasis, admitting: "I was never gonna beat Noel in a war of words."

The bands were notoriously competitive for a period in the 1990s, which was dubbed "The Battle of Britpop" and culminated in the two bands deliberately releasing singles on the same day.

Though Blur won the battle of the singles, with 'Country House' outselling Oasis' 'Roll With It' by 58,000 copies, many would argue that it was Oasis who won the war. In the long run, Oasis became more commercially successful than Blur, who were criticised for what some saw as middle class inauthenticity.

Recently though, the bands' rivalry has subsided, with Albarn and Noel Gallagher even performing together at a gig for the Teenage Cancer Trust at the Royal Albert Hall.

In an interview with The Guardian, Albarn admitted: "The whole class thing was just insane, but we were young and we let ourselves get caught up in it."

He added: "The competitiveness was ridiculous for a while but, you know, I was never gonna beat Noel in a war of words."

Class issues surrounding Blur resurfaced recently, after popstar James Blunt claimed, bizarrely, that Albarn had "an orchard full of plums in his mouth and a silver spoon stuck up his arse."

Albarn's debut solo album Everyday Robots will be released on 28 April.