"The Universal" is a song by English alternative rock band Blur and is featured on their fourth studio album, The Great Escape (1995).

In keeping with the song's science fiction theme, the single's cover art is an allusion to the opening shot of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the music video, directed by Jonathan Glazer, is a tribute to the movie A Clockwork Orange, with the band dressed up in costumes similar to Alex and his droogs.

Musically, 'Universal' is this album's 'To the End' — strings, brass, girl singers, languid vocal lines and a sweeping, epic feel.

Though the band do not engage in their usual vibrant stage demeanour, Damon Albarn frequently turns to the camera and gives a sly, crooked smile.

The man has lipstick all over his face; a lone female entertains male business colleagues by exploiting their sexual interest in her; two men, one identified as a 'red man' (dressed entirely in red) who used to be 'blue', conduct a stilted (subtitled) conversation; two other men – one of them wearing a vicar's clerical collar – become increasingly drunk on cocktails, laughing more and more hysterically until the clergyman tells his friend something to which the viewer is not privy, causing his friend to withdraw into stunned silence (a device similar to that used in Radiohead's promotional video for the song "Just" in the same year).

There are also scenes outside, showing high rise buildings, where people are gathered around a golf ball speaker atop a roof, listening.