Songfacts®:

• Blur frontman Damon Albarn wrote "For Tomorrow" while staying at his childhood home in Colchester, Essex, on Christmas Eve in 1992. It'd been a challenging few months for Blur. The band was heavily in debt and faced the imminent threat of being dropped by their label, Food Records, due to disappointing sales of their debut album, Leisure. Additionally, they'd recently returned from an unsuccessful tour of the US, where their British-centric sound struggled to resonate with American audiences amid the popularity of grunge music. In response, Albarn set about crafting this Kinks-esque tribute to London, with the lyrics subtly referencing the hardships he and his bandmates were going through at the time:
  
  He's a 20th-century boy
  With his hands on the rails
  Trying not to be sick again
  And holding on for tomorrow
  
  London ice cracks on a seamless line
  He's hanging on for dear life
  And so we hold each other tightly
  And hold on for tomorrow
• According to Albarn, the opening line, "He's a 20th-century boy," was inspired by the song "Twentieth Century Englishman" from the album Well at Least It's British by English novelty artist Alan Klein. In an interview with Q in 1995, Albarn elaborated on how the album influenced his creative process: "I discovered it quite by accident about five years ago in a charity shop, and it was instrumental in me making Modern Life Is Rubbish, and changing, and getting an idea of my own self. It came out in about 1962. It predated everything."
• David Balfe, the head of Food Records, was concerned about the lack of hit singles on Modern Life Is Rubbish. Consequently, Albarn took it upon himself to write this song and "Chemical World." Stephen Street, the producer of "For Tomorrow," told Uncut in 2009: "One day, Dave Balfe came in for a listen to the album and said, 'It's crap, it's commercial suicide. It'll sell to a few NME readers, and that's it.' They were pretty taken aback by his hostility, but it did make Damon go. 'F--k you,' and write two more cracking songs for the record."
• In the closing verse of this song, Albarn depicts a man named Jim arriving at a home on Emperor's Gate, a street in Kensington, London. Emperor's Gate carries deep personal meaning for the frontman, as his parents resided there during the early '60s, living next door to none other than John Lennon. The Beatle had recently relocated to the city from Liverpool alongside his first wife, Cynthia. Speaking to Time Out in 2021, Albarn revealed: "For the whole of my life I had this image of my parents living next to The Beatles, so Emperor's Gate, to me, is a romantic thing."
• Shot in London, the official music video for this song was directed by Julien Temple, best known for his work with the Sex Pistols. It finds Blur walking through Trafalgar Square and flying kites on Primrose Hill. Albarn is also seen swinging from the door of a double-decker bus and floating in the River Thames. Originally filmed in black and white, a never-before-seen fully colored version was released on YouTube to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Modern Life Is Rubbish in 2023.
  
  The video, along with the single cover art featuring World War II fighter planes, served to visually reinforce the exploration of British national identity and culture that was central to the band's musical output at the time.
• The lyric, "Let's take a drive to Primrose Hill, it's windy there and the view's so nice," was immortalized by an Australian fan in 2000. They wrote "and the view's so nice" on a road on top of the hill, where it stayed for over a decade before being removed in 2012. Drummer Dave Rowntree responded to the news in Camden New Journal: "I can understand the decision, but I lived in the area for about 15 years and even I got used to it being there. It's a shame, it was in one of our videos, we felt deeply about the lyric and about the hill."
  
  An extended version of "For Tomorrow," called "For Tomorrow (Visit to Primrose Hill Edition)," was made available on CD, vinyl, and cassette in 1993.
• Blur reportedly considered asking Electric Light Orchestra frontman Jeff Lynne to produce "For Tomorrow" before sticking with Street. The song features a group of female backing vocalists, with Street instructing them to sing like the Thunderthighs, the British trio who provided backing vocals for iconic hit singles such as "Walk on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed and "Roll Away the Stone" by Mott the Hoople. "For Tomorrow" also features a dramatic string arrangement performed by the Duke Quartet.
• During the second verse of "For Tomorrow," Albarn references the Westway, a road that stretches from Paddington to Kensington ("London's so nice back in your seamless rhymes/But we're lost on the Westway"). In 2012, Blur would revisit the road for the critically acclaimed "Under the Westway." Another legendary song that pays homage to the Westway: "London's Burning" by The Clash.
• At the time of its release, "For Tomorrow" was only a moderate success, charting at #28 in the UK, but over time, it gained popularity and was ranked at #15 on "The 50 Best London Songs" by Time Out. It was part of Mojo's "The 50 Greatest British Tracks Ever," and Blur fans (on the appropriately named blurfans.com) voted it their fifth favorite single. The Guardian also called "For Tomorrow" the seventh best Blur song.
• "For Tomorrow" was the lead single from Blur's sophomore album, Modern Life Is Rubbish. The album title actually appears in the lyrics of this song:
  
  He puts the TV on
  Turns it off and makes some tea
  Says, "Modern life, well, it's rubbish"
  
  Albarn got the idea for the album title from some graffiti scrawled on a wall in Bayswater Road, which runs alongside Hyde Park in London.
  
  While Modern Life Is Rubbish only reached #15 in the UK in 1993, it's gone on to receive a great deal of praise from critics, with the BBC hailing it as Blur's "first masterpiece."