Songfacts®:

• "The Ballad" is a reworking of a half-finished demo that Blur frontman Damon Albarn released on his solo EP Democrazy in 2003 called "Half A Song." It describes drifting apart from someone with whom you once spent the best of times.
• The song is named after Darren "Smoggy" Evans, Blur's longtime head of security. Albarn told Augsburger Allgemeine in July 2023: "Every time Darren and I went out for a drink, he would tell me to finally, finally finish 'Half A Song.' That has now happened. While there are elements of my relationship with Smoggy in 'The Ballad,' the song as a whole has evolved into a more universal statement. So I transposed The Ballad of Darren to the title of the full album and just called the song 'The Ballad.'"
• Smoggy, whose photo appears on the inner sleeve of The Ballad of Darren, is somewhat legendary among Blur fans. In 1996, he infamously took the place of bassist Alex James for a performance on Italian television after James went missing. Guitarist Graham Coxon was also unavailable for the broadcast, so the band replaced him with a cardboard cutout. In an interview with NME in July 2003, drummer Dave Rowntree called it their "most shambolic performance."
• Speaking to Les Inrockuptibles in July 2023, Albarn described this as "arguably the most important song on the record." He continued: "You know, those names, Darren, like Damon, were very popular among children born in the late 1960s in England. Some smart guys might think that's a disguised way of saying 'The Ballad of Damon.' But I'm not interested in 'The Ballad of Damon.' It's Darren's ballad that interests me, because it seems like it could be anyone's ballad. That's the whole point. 'The Ballad of Damon' would have been far too restrictive, as the song transcends the autobiographical point of view."
• The haunting hand-drawn official visualizer for this song was directed by Los Angeles-based filmmaker Fons Schiedon. It begins with an unseen figure placing a "Do Not Disturb" sign on their hotel room door. Flies then gather as time passes, with the figure failing to emerge from the room.
  
  Schiedon directed a visualizer for every song on The Ballad of Darren, including the album singles "The Narcissist" and "St. Charles Square."
• The Ballad of Darren is Blur's ninth album. In an interview with Consequence in July 2023, Albarn called it "the first legit" Blur record since 1999's 13 because he worked on the material with the other three members of the band, having previously worked alone on 2003's Think Tank and 2015's The Magic Whip. Said Albarn, "It shouldn't necessarily work, but there is clearly some magic there that we can't tap into unless it's the four of us in a room. It's like having a magic solution. You have little vials and you take a pipette and drop certain things into it and only with the right kind of combination does it turn the color of Blur."
• The Ballad of Darren was Mojo magazine's Best Album of 2023. They said, "The Ballad of Darren had classic-Blur heft, tunes that demanded airspace in their own right and lyrics that hit directly home."