"Tender" is a song by English rock band Blur from their sixth studio album, 13 (1999). Written by the four band members about Blur frontman Damon Albarn's breakup with musician turned painter Justine Frischmann, the song became Blur's eleventh top-10 hit on the UK Singles Chart, debuting and peaking at number two on 28 February 1999. It also reached the top 20 in Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, and Spain. Background, lyric and live performances The song's lyric, by Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, describes the break-up between Albarn and Justine Frischmann, then the lead singer of Britpop band Elastica. Frischmann told British newspaper The Observer that she cried the first time she heard the song, then felt embarrassed and angered before she calmed down. The writers share the singing, with backing vocals by the London Community Gospel Choir. During Coxon's hiatus from the group, Blur continued to perform the song, with Albarn asking audiences to sing Coxon's lines, "Oh my baby/Oh my baby/Oh why?/Oh my". At Blur's headline appearance at the Reading Festival in 2003, he introduced the song by saying: "I don't want, for one moment, to be a sentimental but… Graham wrote this song as well… You know the bits he sings and I want you to sing them as loudly as you possibly can. Everyone needs to sing this song." Drummer Dave Rowntree would also sing Coxon's lines on occasion. In July 2009, when Blur re-formed, Coxon's lines in were repeated powerfully by the audience to call Blur back to the stage at Glastonbury, Hyde Park and T in the Park. In March 2013, Albarn, Coxon, Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher performed the song at the Teenage Cancer Trust charity event. Release and reception It is the first track on Blur's sixth album 13 and was also released as the lead single before the album's release. The single reached number two on the UK Singles Chart – kept off number one by Britney Spears' "...Baby One More Time". The single had first-week sales of 176,000 and had an initial lead over Spears in the early part of the week, though "...Baby One More Time" would sell an additional 55,000 units over "Tender" to maintain the number one position. The song's release date had been brought forward to challenge a concern over Japanese imports. The song was awarded "Single of the Fortnight" in Smash Hits,