Damon Albarn on the time he felt like Billie Eilish’s “dad” on stage: “I couldn’t escape”
Fight as I may, I need to start accepting the fact that I am of a generation of music fans whose favourite bands are considered antiques. Kids at university today were only born when some of my favourite records were released and on rotation in my bedroom.
So, despite the moment they’ve recently been getting in the sun, I can’t possibly imagine how Britpop fans are feeling. The ignorant bliss of their youth may only feel like yesterday, but the truth is now 30 years on from those heady days, the 1990s is nothing more than an era of time gone by.
Nevertheless, you would think their presence is strong enough to be recognised in modern culture. It certainly is the case where Oasis are concerned, but what about Blur and more specifically, Damon Albarn? Where does he fit in the discourse of modern youngsters, despite being a producer who has fingers in the musical pies they will be gobbling up?
Well, Damon Albarn had to find out the hard way when he joined Billie Eilish on stage at the Gen-Z of all festivals: Coachella. “I did a gig with Billie Eilish at Coachella,” Albarn tentatively confessed before admitting something that is both surprising, given his career, yet hilarious given the antiquated context of his anecdote. “It was the first time I’d ever used in-ears. And it had like sort of count-ins to when you’re supposed to come in.”
Then, the nightmare continued, “I saw myself in front of this huge, vast crowd of Billie Eilish fans. I couldn’t escape the kind of the sense of like they’re going is that ‘is that her dad?’” he confessed.
The confusion over who Albarn might have been amongst the Coachella fans would have been intensified by the fact that the pair dueted a Gorillaz song that night. With Albarn’s band largely being an anonymous entity and hiding behind the safety of their cartoon holograms, it’s likely a portion of Eilish’s fans that night would have been surprised to see that he was the brains behind the operation.
But Eilish was keen to squash any confusion and remind the fans of just who it was who joined her on stage. She said, “This man changed my life in a lot of ways and changed my complete view of what music could be, and what art could be, and what creation could be.”
Adding, “My first favourite band ever was The Good, The Bad and the Queen when I was six, and Blur changed the world, and Gorillaz changed the world, and this man is literally a genius, and that’s that.”
There feels like quite a clear lineage between Albarn and Eilish, with the latter pioneering modern pop music through her production style. In fact, with Albarn’s later career being a sort of rampant exercise in collaboration, with his most recent featuring Joe Talbot from Idles, it doesn’t feel like long until we see this partnership come to fruition in the studio. I, for one, think that would be a session well worth listening to.
