Damon Albarn created an entire Gorillaz album on an iPad

Credit: Press

The 10 best Gorillaz songs

Wed 26 April 2023 13:00, UK

After dominating the 1990s with Blur, Damon Albarn needed a change of scenery. Rather than embark on a standard solo career, he chose to team up with illustrator Jamie Hewlett to create the animated band Gorillaz.

As a concept, Gorillaz is both pioneering and genius. The animated aspect of Gorillaz allowed Albarn and Hewlett to flex their storytelling muscles by creating wild backstories for Murdoc, 2-D, Russel Hobbs, Noodle, or whichever new character they choose to dream up to join their imaginary universe. At first, it seemed like a one-off project, but Gorillaz have been going strong for over two decades.

While the idea of an animated band is intriguing, the songs still need to meet a certain standard, and Gorillaz have never forgotten that golden rule. From the moment they announced themselves with ‘Clint Eastwood’, Albarn and the band did not let their artistry slip, hence why they have headlined Glastonbury and sold out arenas across the planet.

Almost every musician would do unspeakable things to be in one of the biggest bands in the world, yet, Albarn is in two. Since forming Gorillaz, he’s occasionally slipped back to Blur, but only with his animated friends can he fully express his creative freedom.

The 10 best songs by Gorillaz:

10. ‘Momentary Bliss’

Throughout the career of Gorillaz, they have always worked with various artists across the musical spectrum from different generations and crossed that divide. With ‘Momentary Bliss’, they linked up with British rapper Slowthai and punk two-piece Soft Play (formerly known as Slaves). The energy both parties brought to the track is infectious and juxtaposes impressively with Albarn’s vocal performance.

“I sort of think it’s about instant gratification, it doesn’t last. And there’s lots of that around today,” Albarn said of the song’s meaning to BBC Radio 1. After collaborating with Soft Play, the Gorillaz musician produced the debut solo album by singer Isaac Holman. Later, Holman told Far Out: “I was like, ‘You know what, I’m just gonna take a long shot’, and I messaged someone from Damon’s management. She was like, ‘Send me the tunes over,’ and she sent them to him and then told me he was up for it. I was like, ‘What the fuck?’ I expected him to say no, so I was buzzing.”

9. ‘Ascension’

In 2017, Gorillaz teamed up with American rapper Vince Staples for ‘Ascension’ and brought out the best of their collaborator. When Staples is in form, as he is here, there are few more spectacular sounds in hip-hop. It’s been over half a decade since the pairing teamed up on this track, and unfortunately, they are yet to reunite — hopefully, that changes shortly.

The collaboration is further proof of Albarn’s desire to surround himself with younger artists and how skilfully he excels when crossing the generational divide. While Humanz sounds scattergun, ‘Ascension’ is a highlight and represents the pinnacle of the album.

Brilliantly, Albarn half-jokingly later admitted the collaboration with Staples was born out of a desire to impress his daughter and told Billboard: “Some of the decisions for this record were fuelled by wanting to impress her still.”

8. ‘Kids With Guns’

While Gorillaz usually collaborates with other artists, some of Albarn’s best moments are when he’s alone, like on ‘Kids With Guns’. The Demon Days track showed society’s failure and how weapons have become normal among children, which repulsed him greatly. While the musician isn’t seen as being a particularly politically motivated singer-songwriter, occasionally he uses his work to make cutting social commentary with ‘Kids With Guns’ a prime example of Albarn’s ability to explore the insanity of humanity.

Albarn later explained the song’s genesis: “A nice boy just decided to pick up a knife and show it to his friends at lunchtime. It’s a very real problem, but I’m not treating it as a problem. It’s part of the brutalisation of a generation that’s going on at the moment.”

7. ‘Cracker Island’

Thundercat and Gorillaz is a dream combination. On this creation, Thundercat’s bassline takes the track to another dimension and brings ‘Cracker Island’ to life. The duo were brought together by producer Greg Kurstin, who deserves plaudits for allowing these minds to meet and work together. The funky effort, which explores the wild communities that exist online, was selected as the lead single to their eighth album and set a high bar for the band to follow with subsequent releases.

Of the song, Albarn said to the BBC’s Jack Saunders: “I think the ‘Cracker Island’ is a sort of the idea that people have kind of some mad ideas can all kind of live together happily in their own kind of echo chamber ‘Cracker Island’.”

6. ‘Stylo’

In 2010, Gorillaz returned in sleek style with Plastic Beach, their first album in five years since the chart-topping Demon Days. The record was littered with star-studded collaborations and featured everyone from Lou Reed to Snoop Dogg. For ‘Stylo’, the band recruited Mos Def and Bobby Womack, who brought a different flavour to the track, which combined flagrantly with Gorillaz. Initially, the song was also supposed to feature Barry Gibb from The Bee Gees, but he had a change of heart at the last minute, and it seems almost impossible to imagine him appearing on the iconic creation.

The band’s animated bassist Murdoc said of the track, which was selected as the lead single from Plastic Beach: “This is a new sound for Gorillaz. An electro-ish ‘crack funk’ sound, with a little bit of politics and a lot of soul going down. With ‘Stylo’, I wanted the music to feel euphoric whilst still putting across how precarious our tightly packed situation is now worldwide. Where we’re at as a species on this overpopulated planet.”

5. ‘On Melancholy Hill’

Gorillaz have always held a multi-faceted ability to flick between genres and embed themselves into different musical worlds over the course of an album, let alone their career. Due to this factor, they remain a complicated outfit to pin down and define, but the sombre ‘On Melancholy Hill’ certainly embodies a part of Gorillaz’s identity. While their songs are often full of vibrancy, they’ve always shown a fondness for exploring the melancholic aspects of life too and turning the monotonous into a moment of beauty.

“Well, this morning I woke up, and I was on a massive highway, it was grey,” Albarn once said of his irresistible attraction to melancholy during an interview with Spinner. “The autumn colours were starting to emerge from the green, but there were thousands of people driving their way into Boston to start Monday. On one hand, it’s part of the pessimism of our consumer condition; on the other hand, there’s a kind of beauty in it, and that’s where the melancholy wins for me.”

4. ‘New Gold’

Gorillaz boast an uncanny ability to bring together musicians from disparate worlds to create a sonic cocktail. Before the release of ‘New Gold’, nobody was crying out for a song by Gorillaz with Tame Impala and Bootie Brown, but the unlikely combination proved to be a recipe for one of the best songs of their career. Tame Impala and Gorillaz are two of the most influential acts of the modern era, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a collaboration will be fruitful. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, and they complement one another greatly on ‘New Gold’.

The addition of Bootsie Brown adds a dosage of flair to the effort, and perhaps ‘New Gold’ is best summarised by Murdoc, who said: “A funky, psychedelic ghost train. I’ll take most of the credit, but these lads definitely played their part. Delicate percussion and words of sincerity… listen to them.”

3. ‘Dirty Harry’

When Gorillaz team up with Bootsie Brown, it always leads to magic, as ‘Dirty Harry’ and ‘New Gold’ prove. There’s a chemistry between the two artists that is difficult to replicate, and Brown takes both tracks up a level. ‘Dirty Harry’ was elected as a single from Demon Days and contains a funky beat that gives the track an undeniably timeless edge. Almost 20 years on from the release, ‘Dirty Harry’ still sounds as fresh as it did upon release and remains a staple of the band’s live sets. It’s also one of the most commercially successful tracks of their career, peaking at sixth place in the United Kingdom.

‘Dirty Harry’ was co-produced by Danger Mouse, whose credentials combined with Albarn’s songwriting proved to be a heavenly musical marriage. Initially, he was only supposed to work on a couple of tracks with Gorillaz, but after making ‘Dirty Harry’, they realised they’d stumbled upon something too good to give up.

2. ‘Feel Good Inc.’

Released as the lead single from Demon Days, ‘Feel Good Inc.’ is a moment of artistic brilliance courtesy of Gorillaz and De La Soul. While the track can be enjoyed as an ear-worm on one level, there’s another layer to ‘Feel Good Inc.’, which is more relevant now than when it arrived in 2005. The effort was nominated for three Grammy Awards in 2006, including ‘Record of the Year’, and was named ‘Best Pop Collaboration’. Moreover, it charted at two in the United Kingdom and 14 in the United States.

The track explores themes of how culture has become simplified, touching on people’s obsession with short-term dopamine fixes is more prevalent now than ever before. It’s a creation that can be enjoyed on more than one level if the listener wants food for thought to chew on. Or alternatively, they can blindly listen to the music without questioning the lyrics, which also ironically exemplifies the message of ‘Feel Good Inc’.

1. ‘Clint Eastwood’

While Gorillaz have carved out a glittering career since they emerged at the turn of the 21st century, and their debut single, ‘Clint Eastwood’, set an impossible bar to match. By no stretch are they a group defined by their early material, but the first release remains a creative zenith and forged a blueprint of their identity. Artistically, the track was a clean break from Albarn’s work with Blur and showed the world he was capable of operating in a realm beyond what he’d shown before. At the time, it seemed Gorillaz were a goofy side-project, but now, they are almost as adored as his other band and have created an impeccable legacy over the course of two decades.

During a conversation with Vulture in 2020, Albarn said he believes it to be the band’s best song and claimed it to be “perfect”. He explained: “I mean, you don’t get more perfect than that, really. It’s just complete hybrid, weird shit. And, you know, it came from switching on the Suzuki Omnichord [a portable electronic instrument], and the first preset was the beat. That can only happen once: [you take an] electronic instrument and the first thing you play you use, and it becomes a massive hit.”