Once you've seen it, you can't really forget 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle, and Russel.
Gorillaz has been around in my life for almost as far as I can remember. Damon, of course, has been making music for a pretty long while, but this little project which has grown to a critically acclaimed band started around with a strange album which nobody could really define. It had elements from punk, rock, but all in all its style was pretty alternative to what everybody was listening at the time. They began in 1998 but I remember it was 2001 when they caught my attention. Of course, I was five years old and I was really attracted to the animation style, but as I grew up, and after Gorillaz came Demon Days and Plastic Beach, and in between those, a bunch of B-sides albums, remixes, singles, and even a dub mix of the first album, and in each of them you could notice a pretty distinct style, which begs the question, what defines Gorillaz?
Heraclitus told us that no man may pass through the same river twice, for neither the man nor the river would be the same. Besides flowing rivers, few examples are better than Gorillaz to show how change comes. If I asked you what genre the band is for you, I can assure you that you'd be pretty hard-pressed to describe it in one word, and you'd have to go from album to album and you would still struggle pretty much. Let's go through the phases that they've had.
Phase 1: Celebrity Takedown (2000-2003)
This phase began back in 2000 when Tomorrow Comes Today was released as an EP. Clint Eastwood was the first single released, featuring vocals by rapper Del da Funky Homosapien, who was in Deltron 3030 at the time. His cartoon was a spirit living in Russel. That same month the rest of the Gorillaz album was released, and Rock the House rose through the charts, then 19-2000. There was a collaboration with D12 called 911, which was about the terrorist attacks back in September 11, and there were rumors that a DVD was being made, but James Hewlett, the comic book artist who gave life to the band members, said that the project had been canceled. During this phase, G-Sides was released, which was the B-sides for Gorillaz.
This phase's album could be defined as alternative rock, depending on the tracks, but then again, there's also Punk, which is punk, and the songs with Del were definitely more hip-hop than alternative rock. There's also a bit of dub, some reggae, some Britpop, and of course, Latin music with Ibrahim Ferrer. In this album alone, probably the simplest one in terms of collaborators and styles, you can identify at least ten genres.
19-2000
Latin Simone
Clint Eastwood
Phase 2: Slowboat to Hades (2003-2007)
December 8, 2004 was the day that Gorillaz reopened their site (which had been about Kong Studios before) with a video for a song called Rock It. In May 2005, Demon Days came out and debuted as No. 1 in the U.K. Albums Chart. Dirty Harry was the third single the band released. In this album, you can find classics such as Feel Good Inc., DARE, and Kids With Guns. There was way more put into the production of this album, including top-notch collaborators like De la Soul, Shaun Ryder, Bootie Brown, and Neneh Cherry. It outperformed the first album and has sold eight million copies worldwide.
Although the first album had somewhat of a coherent story, Demon Days was where everything began to be tied in, taking place in the world during the night, and like 911, followed a trend of criticizing the destruction that humanity can make, either of the planet, like seen in Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head and Demon Days, or each other, as seen in Dirty Harry.
The album's style continued to be a mixing of hip-hop and rock, but some of the more tranquil, experimental tracks were exchanged either for another sort of experimental track or a sound which can be described as alternative or dark pop. The bass definitely put some more funk into the album if you compare it with the last one, where it was pretty elaborate but atmospheric at times. Sometimes they used holograms of the band members when they were playing concerts. Many of the younger Gorillaz fans view this phase as the one they remember fondly.
Dirty Harry
Feel Good Inc
Phase 3: Escape to Plastic Beach (2007-2013)
In 2007, Albarn and Hewlett were working on a project called Carousel which eventually came to be the album Plastic Beach. Many people were put off by the style in this album at first because it was definitely more pop than the others, but once shock passed you could see that this wasn't an ordinary album at all. In this one, there were more collaborators than ever before, with even bigger names, like Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Lou Reed, Little Dragon, Gruff Rhys, Bobby Womack, De La Soul, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Sinfonia ViVa, the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music, and others. Shortly after the album was released, Doncamatic came out featuring Daley, and during the tour for Plastic Beach, Damon recorded The Fall in his iPad using Garage Band, then released it exclusively for paying fans. Later, DoYaThing with Andre 3000 and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem was released for Converse, along with a pair of shoes with a unique design.
In this album, the clear "winner" in popularity was On Melancholy Hill, which in a sense is very tranquil and upbeat, with melancholic lyrics. The interesting thing about the album is that it begins with pretty traditional instruments, and as it goes, it slowly starts using more synthesized sounds, until it eventually abandons the traditional and goes for the new, in a way reflecting the theme of nature adapting to the artificial. The whole message of the album is that, in the end, nature will find a way to thrive, it's been here before us and will be after.
Rhinestone Eyes
Empire Ants
On Melancholy Hill
Phase 4: We are still Humanz (2014 - Present)
The recently finished, short-lived phase of the band, in this one, the hype has been built since back in 2014 when rumors of unreleased recordings, wishes of recording songs, and teases about having written new songs were released through interviews. In 2016 is when Gorillaz began using social media to display its history since back in 2000, both as a way to catch new and prospective fans up and as a way to promote and generate hype for whatever was coming. A song called Hallelujah Money was also released, and Demon Dayz, a festival organized and curated by Damon Albarn himself, was organized and took place June 10, 2017 at Maynard. As you can imagine, it didn't take long all the tickets to be sold out.
Humanz was definitely a strong change from the rest of the band's music, with more emphasis being put on the guests than Gorillaz itself, or so it seemed. Statistically, the difference wasn't much, but the change in style was probably too drastic. Although many people did end up liking the album, it took a longer time to warm up to it than even with Plastic Beach. They also released iSides, a collection of songs taken from their Electribe app.
Strobelight
Andromeda
Phase 5: Road to the Now Now
Now we're getting new music, and it really feels like Damon Albarn's been feeling more like a mixture of Demon Days/Plastic Beach vibe, and it shows. The next album, The Now Now, seems to appeal more to the original fans of the band. Until now, there's the Humility video, which features Jack Black and some other celebs in Santa Monica, and a song called Lake Zurich, which was uploaded with a visualiser to accompany the music. Funnily enough, it seems that Murdoch was arrested, and now we have Ace from Powerpuff Girls replacing him in the artwork.
Humility
Lake Zurich
How have they told this story?
The truth is that, if you want to really get to the meat and bones of the history that's been made for Gorillaz, it's going to take you a while. Therefore, I can either recommend you begin with this post which contains a visual history for the band. If that's not good enough, you can delve into the band's wiki. You could make an entire book about this, but I think we can afford to explore the story phase by phase eventually.
The interesting bit is how they put the story out. Since the band's beginnings, they've been using all the tools at their disposals. Music videos, storyboards, books, cameos, including one in Rebelde, a Mexican teenage soap opera, and recently they've been using social media to its full potential, but right now, what most people are paying attention to are the Instagram stories in the various accounts including one for some members of the band.
It's interesting to see how the visual style has changed as well, from a crude cartoon probably inspired on anime, to a more refined look that's placed with live-action backgrounds, to the strange combination of 2 and 3-D style, and now, as it seems, back to overlaying cartoons in the real world. Although the last few changes have been pretty jarring, it's likely that Damon will take the band in a more familiar direction in this occasion.
So if you find something that's pretty unique and groundbreaking, go ahead and do it but don't get stuck with one single style or pattern. Once you've done something, you might as well find another new and unique thing to do. You can use this for stories, you can use this for film, you can use this for pretty much anything you can think of, so go out there and innovate, and use every tool that could possibly help you bring your message out there.
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