What kills me is Jamie is a comic book creator first and fore most, yet he has never released a Gorillaz comic. They could easily keep the story going that way.
@@freakfoxvevo7915 a comic... that you'd have to buy.... doesn't bring in money? Also why couldn't they do it *now* given they've split from labels all together
I feel like the loss of the plastic beach phase of the gorillaz website really speaks to the theme of the album. The preservation of the site being left up to fans is much like the preservation of our planet being left up to all of us.
The funniest thing about The Fall is that it totally feels like 2D would write bizarre and meandering songs about little pink plastic bags during a roadtrip. I will never understand the hate the record gets on a conceptual level even if I can understand why the awkward sound can be offputting
I love the idea of Gorillaz members doing "side projects" or sort of like The Beatles, having an album helmed by a different member and their sensibility coming through. People are no fun
I think it’s just because the songs aren’t it. Like, compared to everything else released? Please. But! You are def right about the concept. It definitely fits 2D, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t even hate The Fall
@@MANJYOMETHUNDER111 nah, before he retired from acting, he did like a dozen "geezer teasers"* in the course of like two years. IIRC, the official reason given was that he was trying to make sure his family was taken care of, which is not something you'd think one of the most successful actors would care about. *not trying to mean, "geezer teaser" is the term used for low-budget exploitation films where the majority of the budget goes towards having an aging star be in a film for a very short amount of time, and then paying everyone else little to nothing. It was very prolific on Redbox.
I remember listening to Murdoc's unhinged Point Nemo podcasts, and there's a part that always stuck with me; "Each moment is racing, towards the inevitable. Mankind is racing towards a conclusion, and that conclusion- it’s becoming clearer and clearer." It really landed home the bleariness of the picture being painted. Anyway, anyone else also realized that this was Gorillaz's beach episode?
My favourite incidental Demon Days story is how while recording DARE, Shaun Ryder kept saying "It's Dare" instead of what was on the page, "It's **there**". Shaun couldn't say "there", but in doing so created one of the most iconic hooks of all time. Seeing the music video on Cartoon Network when I was like 11 or something was a definite inflection point in my life.
fun fact: "it's coming up, it's coming up, it's coming up, it's there" was the sound effect for the elevator on the gorillaz website way before demon days, the song was referencing the point n click flash game lol
On the Rise of the Ogre Gorillaz DVD, Murdoc says Shaun was talking about sound levels or something they were adjusting, him saying "It's coming up" as it was turned up, then "It's there" when it was right. Shaun's accent made it sound like Dare and they decided they liked it and made into a song
I was not a Gorillaz fan before watching this video three weeks ago. I have now not only listened to almost every song at LEAST twice, I have also listened to the official/unofficial audiobooks and iTunes interviews. I have watched every music video, gbite, ident, even the toonami midnight run special edition commericals advertising gorillaz. I have spent hours on the wiki analyzing these characters and their artwork. I have downloaded internet explorer just to SEE what phase 1 & 2 websites looked like. I close my eyes at night and see Murdoc posing for the MTV Cribz camera person. I can’t look at two cups of orange juice and think of anything other than 2D getting hit with a handbag. Help me. I am drowning. There is no sign of land. Emily, you have damned me to this hell. Please send help.
This comment launched me straight back into 2010. About 10 days after finding a newspaper with Plastic Beach artwork on the front page that someone had left at a McDonald's, I had become a completely different person from the one who'd only vaguely recognized the characters on the picture as 'that band my cousin showed me when we were little'...
I’m so sad you missed the Plastic Beach tour, Em. That tour was truly the most amazing live experience ever put to stage in my opinion. I saw the Melbourne show where it was the last show of the tour that featured Jamie’s visuals. At the end of the show everyone was hugging and kissing and doing speeches on stage, the emotion was palpable and we all got the sense that the band was about to breakup. It was so melancholic but so beautiful. As an Australian, to see that many world class acts (including the Syrian National Orchestra of Middle Eastern Music: whose members were mostly tragically killed during the civil war) was such an insanely rare experience due to how expensive it is for foreign acts to tour out here, that I will forever be indebted to Damon Albarn and his sense of goodwill in prioritising providing the best experience possible over profit margins
That was the only live performance of Gorillaz I ever saw, and we danced for 3 hours straight. It was incredible, and I've never experienced a concert like it since.
The HSC exams were right around the tour and I missed it. Over 10 years later, i made their next AUS tour in Sydney. 3 rows from the front of the mosh. Throat and feet raw. The best night of my life.
I was too young (and too broke) to attend a tour like that back then but I remember the pride I felt as a Syrian to hear that an international band worked with our national orchestra especially after all the horrible shit that went down in Syria since 2011. It was what prompted me to actually learn about and listen to Gorillaz
I really didn't know Plastic Beach was disliked by so many when it dropped. I got into Gorillaz around 2015 and that album always stood out as their magnum opus to me. It's still my all-time favorite album. Would love another Gorillaz video since they've released so much good music in the last few years. Song machine is definitely top 3 albums for me
Hindsight brings with it the pared down expectations of knowing how things ended up - I think I liked quite a bit of Plastic Beach when it came out but it did feel very different to Demon Days; like, Snoop Dogg introduced the album in its first track. It felt less gritty, I guess, even as a kid - same-same pop was everywhere and I was tuned into what had Demon Days given me, I wanted more of that alternative vibe. I don't know - it was a weird landscape to be in if you only knew chart music but now knew maybe that wasn't what you were into - and the way/band you found that out with/through was startingto show signs of that clean chart shape of sanitised spectacle. Can see that was studio interference now, but then?
I don't mean to sound like "listen here, kid" but people like me who were into Gorilllaz earlier were really spoiled by the previous albums. To me they were masterpieces, just absolutely great albums and we wanted more. I was excited to hear a new Gorillaz album but when it came out... well I wanted more Demon Dayz and Plastic Beach was not it. It was like when MCR released The Black Parade and I wanted more Three Cheers. It grew on me but Plastic Beach did not.
@@NATA5IIeah, it’s like this with my mum too. we both love gorillaz. she grew up with the first two and absolutely loved them. when plastic beach came out she was kinda disappointed, while i absolutely love it. she just wanted more of their old stuff, nothing against them she just didn’t like it where they went musically. she’ll occasionally listen to a new song but she just likes the older albums more.
1:22:58 this bit has the same vibes as fanfic writers casually mentioning some incredibly disastrous events happening in their personal lives when apologizing for a chapter having to be delayed in the author's notes section
God I read an authors note once where the writer was like 'yeah so I lost my job and my house and had to live out of my car for a while, but here's the new chapter!'
"Murdoc is kinda like that but for gay teenage girls" I'll have you know I stopped being a girl eventually and he's still the Joker for me thank you very much
I find it insane how they just drew this and then made the first music video, like yeah he's a comic book artist but the fact it's so consistent and it keeps getting better without it ever looking cheap is a massive accomplishment
@@creationzikaz4836 right but he still drew most of the key frame animations by hand and for a first timer that is massively impressive and from a new band too
@@Arcademan09 Are you sure? Do you have a source? From what I remember, design was by him only. He’s one of my favourite artist, I must think it’s important to recognise the work done by the actual animators.
After checking, turns out I was right: Hewlett is the director, not a key animator. I couldn’t find any sources claiming he animated key frames which makes me think this is unfounded/made up. 12 people made the clip under his supervision, they deserve recognition. Directors: Jamie Hewlett and Pete Candeland Producer: Sophie Byrne Executive Producers: Andrew Ruhemann/Tom Astor Animators: Pete Candeland, Dave Antrobus, Chris Hauge Assistant and FX Animators: Dave Burns, Molly Sanderson, Michael Douglas, Rufus Dayglo, Nicola Perkiss Tracers: Sam Spacey, Angeline da Silva CG Animators: Chris Hemming, Stuart Hall
The failure of Plastic Beach has been something that's lived inside of my head rent free for the past 13 years. Something that I loved that you touched upon was the fact that Phase 3 happened in that awkward transitional period between the downfall of traditional media and the rise of social media. I'll never forget the fact that Stylo initially premiered on Vimeo of all places. Anyway, it's depressing to look back on this era of Gorillaz because of how ambitious it was. One of the worst things I remember reading about on the old Gorillaz-Unofficial forums back in the day was regarding the live shows; the entire tour was compromised of a lot of stadium sized venues, and I remember users saying that the concerts they attended were half empty...
God, the part about “Plastic Beach” not really having singles is so true. The songs really just don’t work too well outside the full album context. And it was released the same time that pop albums basically died, it’s a wonder it did as well as it did
Ironic in hindsight, seeing as the 2020s are the era of pop _albums_ being a big deal again, thanks to Spotify making album listening easier than singles were 13 years ago.
The songs on Plastic Beach are not "hit singles" types because modern listeners have such short attention spans that they simply would not notice songs that takes time to grow on the listener ... What the songs lacks is hook, they do not have hooks which immediately get the attention ... but anyone who give those songs another chance would be abundantly rewarded by such rich and gut wrenching emotions ... It did take me 2-3 listens to "get" a lot of the great stuffs on the album and there's been no turning back ever since ....
I remember how broken Gorillaz felt when Plastic Beach felt. Not the album but just the entire phase. It felt so scattered and tbh I was expecting something in the likes of Demon Days. Now I find myself going more and more to Plastic Beach and really enjoying the album. It truly is a gem.
I remember being really excited when Stylo came out. That was like the height of my Gorillaz fandom - I liked some of their songs and obviously remembered the music videos for Clint Eastwood and Feel Good Inc. from my mid-late teens So I went back and bought the first two albums, loved em, listened to them on repeat, etc. Then everything just kinda… fell apart and after Doncamatic came out, I totally lost interest. To this day, I don’t think I’ve listened to the entirety of Plastic Beach. I liked a single or two off of Humanz, but never picked that one up either. Well, this video has inspired me to do it. This, and the fact New Gold is a banger. I’m going to give them another shot.
I think that in retrospect, as an at-the-time teenage hater of the album, I wasn't sad and angry about Plastic Beach changing the sound and the band "losing their edge." I was sad about what Albarn and Hewlett were pointing out: that after 2008, and a "positive" election cycle in the US, EVERYONE ELSE abandoned their pretense of edge. There was a massive shift away from any sort of revolutionary hope or idealism, and we just kind of decided climate change would kill us all, and that yes, the apocalypse would happen, in our lives, but not our parents'. I was angry that Gorillaz were accurately identifying that poppy, cheery, electric sounds are way scarier than the Halloween-core bass of Demon Days, because Demon Days at least told you "you can avoid this, this is evil, with your sound you kill the Inc." Plastic Beach isn't a happy album. It's one of my first exposures to the nihilism that came to define the mid 2010s and onward.
I genuinely hope the “In Defense of Humanz” is real and not just a joke. Humanz was the first Gorillaz project I was there for when it came out. I remember “finding” Gorillaz years after Phase 3 and when the very first streams happened I snuck them onto a background tab while working in Forensic Science class at school, it was and always will be an album I hold very near and dear to me even if it’s not exactly the best (although not nearly as bad as some say). So I eagerly hope that you do actually make a Humanz video!
I stand by my opinion that Humanz has some of their best songs, but my main issue with the album is that the mixing and mastering are kind of wonky. For example, Submission has a backing guitar riff, but it's so muddled that you can barely even hear it... I really hope that it gets a remaster one day, because those songs deserve better.
It's a good album, just doesn't really feel as impactful as the Gorillaz projects that came before or that would come after. It's definetely solid but probably one of the weakest of their lineup imo
As a newer Gorillaz fan who only got into the band around The Now Now, this was a really nice, welcome dive into the world of Gorillaz pre-revival. I'll await that In Defence of Humanz video with bated breath!
Gonna just mention it's "bated" breath, not that it particularly bothers me but just 'cause it's the sort of funny thing easy to never find out if no one mentions it. I thought until last year that one's principles are called "tenants" instead of "tenets".
@@AnnDVine Basically, for the same reasons as the negative comments shown in the video: it was a different sound from Classic Gorrillaz. Even more so than usual. A LOT of features. It was also more overtly political(recorded before the 2016 election). And it didn't help this was after the longest hiatus of the band.
I don't have a lot of strong music opinions, but I've been saying since it came out that Humanz is getting the Plastic Beach treatment and one day it'll get the praise it deserves
This video is really rewatchable, and it speaks to not only how intruiging the whole gorillaz backstory and stories are, but how well you lay them out to people. Wish there was more to talk about them from you, great video!
This video is a masterpiece. Thank you for contextualizing WHY I loved this band. I finally stumbled on them around the time Humanz came out. I listened to Demon Days and their Self-Titled through one of the worst winters of my life (I specifically remember Tomorrow Comes Today being on literal loop through arguably the worst moment of my entire life), and then Plastic Beach through one of the best but most melancholic summers. Humanz came out (and since I wasn't connected to the internet I didn't know it was coming until it showed up on my library's shelf), and Humanz became the backdrop to an even worse winter in 2017/2018 lol. I stopped listening to them until The Now Now came out. I was in that traumatized headspace until Humility literally SNAPPED me out of it. This video brought me back to that time and really... idk made me reevaluate it in a way that I hadn't been able to prior. Thank you. I took my first dose of HRT on my birthday while blasting Tranz through my small Bluetooth speaker. This band, as much as any metal or punk band I've grown up with and listen to on a daily basis, has been just as instrumental to surviving the darkest and brightest sides of my life. I still haven't listened to Cracker Island. I'm not sure how my life will change when I do. Also I will not hear slander of Revolving Doors.
I never got into the Gorillaz. I remember liking Feel Good Inc in High School and I always viewed the band favorably, but it never went deeper than that for me. I always got the sense from their music videos that there was more going on than I was aware of, and I am now aware that I seriously missed out because everything that's been described in this video is the exact kind of thing I'd have adored and obsessed over back then.
As someone who really got into Gorillaz during the height of Phase 3, I can say that it was only really easy while that phase was going on--while the interactive website and the games were still up. There was just so much going on with so few long lasting sources to draw from that all of the info died out when the hype and the money did. I can only imagine that it was even tougher during Phase 2 when the bulk of Gorillaz' popularity was televised instead of being accessible anytime online. There were the compilation books of Gorillaz lore, but that cost money. Once a phase ended, keeping track of that intricate and dramatic storyline was really difficult to do for free on your own.
It's been argued that the Mona Lisa is a relatively unremarkable painting (as far as a *Renaissance master's* works go at least), and the main reason it's probably THE most famous painting today is because in 1911 a guy tried to steal it from the Louvre and it made international news. If that hadn't happened, ol' Mona wouldn't have been known that well outside of the art community and some *other* painting would have been in the public consciousness.
Seeing you geek out about Gorillaz albums makes me want to talk about albums and bands I love. Music is a such a personal thing to me that I don't really like to talk about it to others that don't share the same opinion, but you being so unashamed about your love of Plastic Beach is inspiring.
As someone who has been struggling with depression for the last 5 years or so, Demon Days and Plastic Beach are albums that resonate a lot with me, and as such I hold them very near and dear to my heart. I really like that the newer Gorillaz albums actually try to be more upbeat and not so much doom and gloom, but there is just something about early to mid Gorillaz that just clicks with me and a lot of people. I very vividly remember this one time when I was 14 where I just layed down and listened to the music while contemplating my life up to that point. So you could guess that this video was a treat for me. Thank you, Emily, you're amazing. Edit: hey wait what the fuck what about broken
I 100% agree, one of my favorite ‘modern’ Gorillaz songs is Strobelite. The funky moves the video that showed how much Noodle was like. daughter to Russ, Murdoc, and espically 2D. Rhinestone Eyes anger, Fire Coming out of a Monkeys Heads hypnotic gaslighting, Kids with Guns understanding, all just hit me so hard in my gut and chest. Gorillaz is just so good lmao
My relationship with Gorillaz has so far been "I know their two most famous songs, they're pretty good but not my cup of tea" It blew my mind to find out that those are not, in fact, animated avatars of the band members, but fictional characters with their own lore and (convoluted) story. Also, thank you for introducing me to On Melancholy Hill, that song is amazing.
I… cannot believe that all along, the Rhinestone Eyes music video I’ve been watching since I was a kid was a fan recreation all along. I’m gobsmacked. Thank you so much for this video it’s been an incredible trip down memory lane ❤
I cannot believe there's an actual music video now and that the storyboard version was actually just the scrapped remains of the video instead of the intended final version.
@@kasane1337I remember when it came out it was titled that it was a storyboard and checking TH-cam everyday to see if the actual music video came out lmao
I am beginning to think we are the same person. Growing up watching the Nostalgia Critic, being enamoured by musicals, listening to Gorillaz nonstop & pouring myself over the lore for hours. This video is incredibly special to me, as is your channel as a whole. Thank you for putting so much time and effort into creating content that means a lot to you, and by extension me (and many others).
1:00:53 After Plastic Beach, I noticed a trend that started with Damon where he would release a smaller baby album that’s more of a personal project varied in scale in-between the larger albums. For example: After Plastic Beach, we got The Fall, an album supposedly made by 2D in captivity on the tour / Damon making concept tracks on tour. After Humanz, we got The Now Now, a supposed 2D project like the previous one. It was small in scope but had some twists to keep it interesting (Ace, Humility, and Tranz being produced by the studio behind Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared). And after the absolute unit that was Song Machine, we got Cracker Island, another very Damon album. It’s a pattern that I’m surprised a lot of fans haven’t noticed yet but point out how short those albums are when they’re probably just intended to prevent long gaps like there was between phase 2 and 3.
I think the reason for this is that failure can usually be explained: "This didn't get enough money," These actors didn't get along," "Doug Walker," etc. etc. But success is usually such a weird combination of luck, chaos, and timing that any attempt at a meaningful reason why something is a success is nonsense at best and revisionist history at worst. I feel we learn more from studying failure.
Thank you so much for this video! It was such a joy to watch. Divided into multiple days so I can fully concentrate. I've been a huge Gorillaz fan and seeing all the media you used... That must've taken forever to put together! Thank you for your effort
I remember back in 2018-2019 I had a major gorillaz obsession. I've spent the last few hours relistening to all their best songs. Thanks for reminding me of how amazing of a band they are.
Plastic Beach has the honor of housing my favorite song of all time, On Melancholy Hill, making it my favorite Gorillaz album without question. Really such a cool era for Gorillaz, from the evocative theming to the batshit insane in-universe story being told.
I'd have said the same...but I have to admit Silent Running on Cracker Island cut me right to the core and I can't get it out of my head. And haven't been able to, for weeks.
My fiance and I are getting married in July and our first dance is gonna be to the accoustic version of On Melancholy Hill! For a proposal gift, he made me a music box that plays it.
As a longtime Gorillaz fan, and someone who broadly enjoys the fictional backstory's wackiness, but has paid zero attention to the band's wider cultural significance, I am approaching this video like it's one of those person-shaped Junji Ito holes in the Amigara Fault
The build-up to Phase 3 was insanely important to me. Demon Days was and still is a near-perfect album to me, and I begged and begged my parents to buy it for my 10th birthday. I didn't understand any of the lyrics, but the sound was like nothing they played on the radio. I was left in shock after the "El Mañana" video dropped. Noodle had always been my favourite Gorillaz member and seeing her island crash and burn like this, implying her to have died in the attack, was too much for my 10-year-old brain to handle. The next day at school, I couldn't stop talking about it. When Plastic Beach came out, it was the biggest and most incredible collection of sounds and songs I had heard thus far in my life. I didn't know that pop and electronic music could sound like that, the mixing of strings and hip-hop on "White Flag" blew my mind, the two-part structure of "Empire Ants", the somber singing by Bobby Womack on "Cloud of Unknowing" blew me away. I remember reading in a teletext of MTV Germany's description for the "Stylo" music video, that the song and album were hailed as "the sound of pop music five years in the future". And I hoped they were right! It was incredibly dissapointing seeing all the anticipation and tension created in the videos and clips just...melt away. In 2010, I hadn't heard about TH-cam. I was not online at all, and so I didn't watch the "Rhinestone Eyes" video until years later. As far as I knew back then, they dropped "On Melancholy Hill", followed by "Doncamatic", then "DoYaThing", and dipped. Thank you for making this video and showing the long, complicated history of one of the greatest albums of all time. It is a shame that Hewlett and Albarn weren't able to tell the project's story the way they wanted to. At least we still got the music and Bruce Willis' most awesome cameo.
This might be one of the best videos I've seen on youtube, it encapsulates the Plastic Beach era perfectly for someone that was also there during the pre release, release, and fall situations with the fanbase. It surprised me how much the perception of this era has shifted over the years, but I'm glad there was someone that decided to compile the whole story, and that not everything was sunshine and rainbows. It feels weird to have been part of a fanbase's history during such a turbulent time composed of a lot of lost material, things almost nobody talks about when bringing the topic of the band or the album, and I'm happy you did. Amazing work Emily. Self titled debut album is still #1 tho
One last thing I want to add, and this is purely a personal opinion, but I think calling every new album Gorillaz releases as a new "phase" makes no sense anymore after Plastic Beach. Back then it made sense, as each album used to have extremely long wait times between them, and all came along with a huge supply of extra material and unique storylines that gave each era it's own identity. But ever since Humanz, Gorillaz is now more like a "regular" band releasing albums on a more consistent schedule and shorter gaps, with some variants in style and presentation but not anything overly ambitious or different. There's nothing wrong with that, mind you, but it feels silly to call something like Cracker Island "phase 7" when Song Machine came out like two years ago and stylistically they're both in pretty much the same vein, same goes to The Now Now and Humanz. The growth in indie music and streaming has finally given Gorillaz a proper place to just.. *be*, no longer this weird phenomenon they once were, they're just another band like any other, and seems they want to be treated as such. I think they deserve it.
Really glad you made it clear Seattle Yodel was a highlight on The Fall, absolutely one of the most emotional tracks in Gorillaz catalogue. I always cry when they go "yodeley hee hoo"
I'm so so glad you were the one to drop a 90 min breakdown of the Gorillaz into my life. I had no idea anyone felt as strongly about Demon Days as I do
I wouldn't say it's my favorite album ever, so I suppose I don't feel as strongly about it as you do - but it's definitely my favorite Gorillaz album (and I really, really like Gorillaz) and one of my favorites of the 2000s.
i feel like ppl really don't give it enough credit as an album top to bottom; the title track is such a spectacular payoff to the album its beautiful and cathartic. i could blabber for hours about it
Demon Days is literally the most popular album Gorillaz has put out, and there are 7 billion people in this world I assure you many others feel strongly towards it
I listen to a lot of music, so I don't really think of songs, albums or artists as "favorites" anymore, that being said I'll cherish Demon Days till the day I die. For other people who have a similarly strong connection to Demon Days, there's a guy on TH-cam who re-did the entire album using only his voice, and it's surreal - after so many years it's almost like listing to the album for the first time again. I know it may sound pretentious or ridiculous, but it really is an incredible experience and I highly recommend giving it a listen.
The best video essays are the ones where people simply spill their thoughts and feelings on their favorite things for over an hour. Already watched this video on nebula, but dropping by to please the algorithm gods. Great work, Emily!
I came into this video not knowing much about Gorillaz. They were one of many bands that I made me go, “yeah they seem cool. I should listen to more of their music someday,” and then just went on with my life. This video helped me decide that I wanted to dive in right now and I’m so happy I did
The doofiest smile spread over my face when I heard the instrumentals of "Some Kind of Nature" under the segment discussing the album's release. "Some Kind of Nature" is, easily, my favorite Gorillaz song, and it's one of those ones that I feel like I never hear anyone mention when they talk about their best tracks.
What you said about Gorillaz audience being multi-generational is very true. I remember when the video for Humility coming out and wondering “What’s this?” For half a second after seeing it trending, before moving on. It wasn’t until last year with the release of the Cracker Island music video that I actually decided to check out the band, and subsequently became obsessed with it. Over twenty years in and they’re still making new fans.
I was lucky enough to see Gorillaz 3 times in 2010 as part of the Plastic Beach tour. They were incredible shows and they are a band that has meant so much to me since I first heard Clint Eastwood as a kid. I'd love to see more videos from you covering anything Gorillaz! Thank you very much for this one
I actually really loved "little pink plastic bags" and "amarillo" from The Fall, there is something very "on the road, at night, and its raining" about both of those. They feel nostalgic in the chillest way.
I don't see why Stylo didn't do better on the charts. The rare times I pull out my Plastic Beach CD I still listen to Stylo like 3 times in a row. That song is fire.
I was a full-blown G fan in 2010. I remember the whole mellow drama that was Phase 3 and damn this video hit hard. The fandom being torn, the failed releases, the missed tour 😔. But overall this album was so rich and the ideas so huge that it was easily the best thing that happened that year. Thanks for this video it was excellent and reminded me to listen to DoYaThing cause it is fact, The Shit.
Gorillaz' debut album was on loop every single day for 6mo in my room when it came out. Demon Days was bigger and bolder, like the line art had been coloured in. But Plastic Beach really fell short for me outside of "Stylo" and "Empire Ants". It didn't feel Gorillaz enough and that's likely because of its more collaborative Carousel origins. I still don't look back on it fondly but I do appreciate the work the team put in to make this hypertextual work function as best as they were able to. i completely missed the website at that time as i was entering college and the album had disappointed me enough that i didn't want to play along with the supplemental material. But now i get why everyone made a big deal of the Noodle mask at the Humanz tour show i was at a few years ago, wherein a fan gifted Damon one and he wore it for a few songs. "DoYaThing" is still a banger, through and through. Hilarious that Haley died in canon. Would definitely be interested in a deep dive into Humanz. i quite like that LP, even if Grace Jones' guest spot wasn't put to good use. Is "Andromeda" up there with "On Melancholy Hill" with the fanbase?
There is something to the first Gorillaz record that I can't explain well. It's something about the quality of the recording with the trippy mix. I listened to it again yesterday and I was just entranced. The song writing is not the strongest nor is it thematically very consistent, but it's just like a sonically interesting and harrowing record. Tracks like M1A1 and Dracula are like really strange horror homages that are as cartoony as they are strange. While tracks like 19-2000 and Gravity are just so steeped in a specific aesthetic that they make for musical stops to just admire the grime. I dunno, I wish there was a thorough analysis of this record by someone who really loved it because it's so hard to verbalize why it works so well.
As someone who only really discovered the Gorillaz during the pandemic in college, this history is absolutely fascinating to me. I had zero context for their history and immediately fell in love with DARE and Doncamatic at the time. I very vividly remember being extremely confused by the fan comments from years back about how “this wasn’t a real Gorillaz song” since Damon wasn’t on it much. To this day Plastic Beach and Song Machine are my favorite albums because, as an outsider joining late, Gorillaz really is about collaboration. I perennially love the albums focused on guests more than the core four because it really makes the characters feel like a real band that actually does collabs
As someone who've literally only ever heard Feel Good Inc, the slight rumblings of "Robot Noodle is Bad", and "Ace from Powerpuff Girls joined The Gorillaz"... I think I'll listen to their albums, now, after this.
the on melancholy hill description knocked me to the ground as much as the song itself. on melancholy hill has always tightened my chest in a way i could never put into words, but she did it
The main "problem" with Gorillaz is that their music is super complex and there's a lot going on there, and you're often not going to get it on the first listen. And on the surface, their songs can be somewhat off-putting or even just kind of simple sounding. I think we've all had that one Gorillaz song where we were like "eh, I don't really like this" to "this is one of the best songs ever written".
Fully agree through the first two phases. But as a musician who really pays attention and takes the time to experience an album multiple times, Plastic Beach did reach the "oh, I get it" phase but never the "now I like it" phase. And that's after being "all in" on the first two phases. Disjointed for disjointed sake doesn't work for me. Disjointed to make a point works in one song per album. I felt like I was supposed to be like "wow that's crazy... And deep". I felt the former, but not the latter. This is coming from someone who fully understands the technical genius it takes to make an album like this, and someone who loves the Gorillaz. I respect it, but just don't like it.
i fully agree, i thought i hated O Green World the first time i listened to it but now I am in love with it and i think Every Planet We Reach Is Dead is next on the list
I totally understand that missed out feeling at 1:00:00. The last time my favorite band (SOAD) was in my state was in 2005 and my dad said no for similar reasons. They immediately went on a 10ish year hiatus and still haven’t played in my state since. I had to fly out to phoenix back in 2018 to finally see them! On a side note I saw the Plastic Beach tour in Dallas and it was AMAZING
I loved They Might Be Giants as much as Gorillaz growing up, and I had to wait till LAST YEAR to see them in Vancouver. I GOT INTO THEM IN 2006. I HAD TO WAIT 17 YEARS TO SEE THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS LIVE.
I need to see an entire documentary on the entirety of the Gorillaz from you. I love this. Especially after hearing and seeing the new work from the Gorillaz this yeat
I'm So happy someone understands my EXACT bitterness with the plastic beach concert because I was 14 myself and my parents said the SAME THING, also that oakland was "not very safe at night" for a..???? huge concert??? I bought an ipod with the money I saved instead and added the murdoc paragliding game on it, 3 days later it was stolen at school
Okay... I finally finished watching the video. And I want to say thank you so much for making it, Emily. To be honest, I was prominent enough in the Gorillaz fandom back in the day that you and a lot of people reading this might remember me to some degree (mod on the G-U forums, and artist of a 100+ page long Gorillaz fancomic that I still get messages regularly about on Reddit to this day. No, I can't reupload it, it's probably lost forever). And I was *absolutely* one of the people who did not like Plastic Beach when it came out, and I was definitely part of the fandom's general "meh" attitude towards it. It was a really weird album at the time, and I think you really nailed why it struggled as much as it did, considering the time it came out in. It's shocking to hear that Gorillaz is on Phase 7 at this point. Phase 4 was only 6 years ago!! I thought Humanz was pretty bad and checked out soon after, but I'm happy to hear they are still making music and videos. I have to wonder, what may have happened with Gorillaz if it stayed current with the times? What would Gorillaz look like if it took advantage of the modern trends of v-tubers and streaming? ARGs are hugely popular, and the comparison of the old Gorillaz days of Phase 1 & 2 to an ARG is incredibly apt and an awesome observation. So why not do another multimedia project like that again? Or are they, and I've been missing out this whole time? Your video might just make me pull Gorillaz up on my phone and take a look again. Thanks so much for the trip down memory lane, and I'm sorry for my rambling comment.
I have mixed feelings about Humanz and found The Now Now a little thin, but I thought Song Machine and Cracker Island were both top notch - absolutely returns to form. Interestingly, they've also been experimenting with vtuber-type stuff with Murdoc in their promotions, which seems like a sensible way to do up-to-date promotions that utilise their characters.
@@oddlazdo No, weird takeaway from what I said. You put a lot of irrelevant nonsense in your comment, it's a little hard to even understand what you're trying to say. Literally no one cares what your opinions are on the subject or your "fandom credentials" btw?
they did some vtube-ish interviews around the time of humanz that were really funny, but it seems like the modern trend they're jumping on for cracker island is tiktok style shorts 😔 the music is decent tho, skinny ape has self titled vibes
I think the main complaint is that Gorillaz themselves feel like a guest spot on their own album. While the songs are sweet in their own right (Ascension is a blast!) Following up the ambition of earlier albums with Humanz was always going to disappoint some people.
Humanz is the soundtrack of my sophomore year of high school, (which, ironically, makes it pretty hard to go back and listen to, because that was a baaaaaad time). I love the album, I’ve listened to it over two dozen times and I’ll defend it until the day I die.
I think humanz wasn’t too bad, but was just a bit of a disappointment. By the time of its release, I think a lot of fans already regarded Plastic Beach as an all time classic and were hoping for something that would stand next to it. What they got was what I think is a very quirky album with as many triumphs as it has interesting curios and dubious experiments. I hated it when it came out, but have since come around and appreciate its ambition.
I'm a fan of Gorillaz since childhood but because I didn't understood well english at the time, I missed on a lot of stuff I rediscovered in your video. Thank you so much for your work!!!! I hope you will do one about the newer phases of Gorillaz and the sadly canned Netflix project in the future.
I will say this, and believe me or not, but this happened. Leading up to the Melancholy Hill music video the hype was real, at least for the community boards I was on at the time. I can not for the life of me remember how I found it (pretty sure 4chan) but the music video was leaked on this sketchy ass site. So being 13-14 at the time, I hypercam 2'd the music video and added the music on top of it and made a TH-cam channel just to upload the video. It went viral for about 12 hours before youtube caught it. I felt like a hero, although not the case at all 😅 but that's my small fan contribution to the Gorillaz community as a pre teen. Still a huge fan to this day.
Im so glad that my sister took my daughter to her first Gorillaz concert past year ❤ It was her first concert, at 12. I like Gorillaz a lot and although I'm not a fan, I really appreciate their art. Btw, it would be amazing if you could share your playlists somewhere. You seem to have an impeccable musical taste :3
One of my earliest toddler memories is going with my dad (a teacher) to chaperone a school dance, and doing a silly dance to DARE. I think it really shaped who I am? You said everything perfectly.
Following Phase 3 at the time of its release, 'lifeboats' had me howling. I've recently discovered you from your AVGN video and have been making my way through your channel's catalog, and I just want to say, it's rare to encounter an entire body of work that feels like it's made for me. Not only do the topics you choose tend to bring me back to my younger self, but you also provide a level of research and analysis thats unmatched. You masterfully weave together a detailed timeline of the ups and downs of production, public reception, and the landscape of media at the time, as well as what you liked, and why you liked it. You speak on the things you're passionate (or at least, nostalgic) about in ways I wish I could. Thank you for such consistently great content, and for this lovely retrospective in particular.
gorillaz has such a special place in my heart- it was my first real introduction to alternative music as a whole, and the amount it's stuck with me and influenced my tastes in both art and music throughout the years is basically impossible to describe. really glad to see you cover them, the way you describe the impact plastic beach + demon days had on you is so perfect
I was like, "Oh boy, I can't wait for the new to Lady Emily Album to come out!" And I was also like "Hmm, it's a shame that there aren't that many videos about gorillaz, they're my favorite band!" Imagine my delighted surprise!
I will say that The Fall was amazing in terms of it's detailing of the music and where they were at that point in the tour. I am from Houston, TX and the song "The Perish of Space Dust" was made in Houston as evident from it's credit on the album. Houston LOVES to credit themselves as "Space City" as we are the city famousley known for the control center during the Space Race to the moon in the 60's. "Houston, we have a problem." Was so famous that Houston took it and it's role as it's whole entire identity. The Houston Astros (Baseball). Astroworld (Themepark), Astrodome (Stadium), and The Houston Rockets (Basketball). Not only is the title a reference to the cities identity but the sampling was so very nostalgic to me. The radio at the beginning of the song flipping between stations before reaching a Morning talk show reminded me so much of when it would be 6AM getting up for school before listening to the morning talk show everyday. The music is so very electronic but so very country at the same time that it seems as if Damon Albarn tried to imitate a Southern Drawl in his singing was amazing to me. The Fall, to my understanding, is not only a diary of their tour but a love letter to each place they traveled to.
I rarely make youtube comments but all I want is to hear you make a defense of Humanz. This was a delightful video and insight to the way Plastic Beach was received, as it happened, which is a form of history in itself since so much of its promo material now is left to fans to compile. I was not 'in the fandom' when Demon Days and Plastic Beach came out despite listening to them at the time, so seeing how poorly some of my favorite songs were received was eye opening but expected with the full history of its production being laid out like this. I was there fully aware for Humanz, and that is something I would love to hear you document. Humanz is one of my top 3 albums from them. So you can only imagine how the backlash made me feel. I'm still bitter to this day that Hallelujah Money was received the way it was when it dropped.
first of all, i want to thank you for informing us that Gorillaz DID NOT in fact do NFTs, because i have been pissed off about that ever since the news broke and then was too mad and busy to ever find out that they called it off??? so this is very welcome news to me, lol. second, as someone who has been a casual Gorillaz fan since Demon Days but was never able to engage much with the multimedia and backstory, this was a super interesting watch! i remember it took me a while to listen to Plastic Beach after it dropped, since i was kind of worried i wouldn't like it, but it quickly became one of my favorite albums period, just wall-to-wall bangers on that one. it's kind of sad to know i missed my chance to see a massive Gorillaz show on the scale of the Plastic Beach tour, but i am really happy to know they are chugging along and doing their thing independently now, and will hold out hope of getting to see them live in the future. (i was lucky enough to see Monkey live when it was at Lincoln Center, so it kinda evens out in the end i guess.) also the mention of Murdoc fans hit me like a fucking brick, god the pickle man era on tumblr was such a time
Never really got into Gorillaz before, but this was an amazing video and it makes me want to go back and check their discography again... Your channel truly has some of the best video essays on YT
A day ago, I knew nothing about Gorillaz aside from the name. Since, I've listened to a few songs and definitely feel like they might be a new obsession. Stylo and Melancholy Hill are two of the best songs I've ever heard. I love how this channel does these interesting deep dives and provides just enough information to lure in existing fans and also people like me who know nothing about the subject material
10:15 you missed out largely on the regional importance of date. While overall it wasn’t a massive hit. In the UK it was. The song features Shaun Ryder. Of whome was one of the most influential artist in Britain. But not many other places. So regionally it was huge
God this album. So many memories. This album was not my favorite Gorillaz when i first heard it. But it's now become my 2nd favorite of theirs. I remember blasting it while waiting in line for Coachella in 2010 and finally understanding how great it is. "Your eyes are like factories far away" is SUCH a bop that beat is so infectious. I also remember that during their set i got up on my then bfs shoulders with a water gun during "kids with guns" - such a fun moment. I've seen Del tha funkee homosapien perform Clint Eastwood and I've seen Gorillaz do it as well. My dream is to see them do it together.
I remember being so confused at the Rhinestone Eyes music video, or lack therof, as a kid, and those years of my favourite band just being dead, going out with a whimper. So happy their recent projects are so good, though I have literally no idea how well they're doing commercially.
can't believe you talked about the internet explorer ad without mentioning it's LIKE A WIZARD'S PORTAL EDIT: just wanted to throw in that Plastic Beach's Non-ending is one of the greatest tragedies of the music industry.
I did not like Plastic Beach at all when it came out but the more I listened to it, the more I grew to like it and it quickly became my favorite Gorillaz album. It really is weird to think of how "out there" it felt at the time, and you captured that really well.
This was fantastic, thank you for the time and efforts you out in to this. Honestly, I hope you're really proud of it. Also, super bonus points for having Todd In The Shadows do a guest voice. Amazing. 10/10
So many of my childhood memories are attached to this band, basically the songs just playing during huge events. Also one of the best summertime naps listening to Melancholy Hill on loop haha.
Plastic Beach took a while to grow on me, but I love it now. I got to see them perform live too in NYC for my birthday. Only weak part about the show was Lou Reed, who iirc was having health issues at the time. God it hurts to think of all the lost media I missed out on back in the day.
Fun fact about the evangelist - during the live tours they had at the time, they had booths (more like giant arcade machines with drawing tablets on them) where you could go and draw your entry for the competition and it would be submitted. Can still remember the character I drew as a sweaty little 16 yr old nerd.
Emily! You restarted my love for Gorillaz. I forgot about how much I used to love them. I had their first three albums on CD my brother and I would listen to all the time when running errands for my mom in her best-up 2001 minivan. It was a trip.
I didn't expect to watch all of that. This is the most in depth insane gorillaz essay video that I've seen. Really goes into everything that made them so important and gives so much context to the media and cultural landscape that it existed in. Every little thing makes so much more sense to me now. Great work
Damn Emily, that's you best video until now imo. I love how you and Sarah always get me interested in random stuff, because you radiate enthusiasm that's just so infectious.
I was never a dedicated fan of Gorillaz, but i was absolutely obsessed with the videos for Melancholy Hill and Rhinestone Eyes when i stumbled across them, and Plastic Beach is definetly my favorite Gorillaz album and one of my favorite albums. So glad to see this passion project from you!
As someone who enjoyed Gorillaz songs without knowing who they were until I fell hard down a rabbit hole at the tail end of the Humanz era, thanks for this. I became obsessed with the lore and finding every single bit of extra or unreleased content I could find. Still am lol. Plastic Beach's huge variety of now lost media haunts me to this day. It's refreshing to listen to a lore recap/Gorillaz analysis vid from the perspective of a fan just as deep in it. The few other Gorillaz video essays I've seen treat the cartoon members as a quirky addition or mascots of a Damon Albarn project rather than driving factors for the music and plot (and also forgetting about Jamie's contributions completely). idk I'm rambling, but I love this band so much and I think this was a great vid lmao
This is their best album, I discovered in in 2017 when I went back to "That band my dad liked in the mid 2000's" (I was only 17) just as the marketing for Humanz was ramping up. I fell in love, it's great
56:01 joker is a legendary figure in the uk dubstep scene known for introducing g-funk and southern hip-hop influences to the genre in the late 2000s. the fact that his stage name is "joker" doesn't mean his work shouldn't be taken seriously.
Nobody:
Damon Albarn: *starts a side project*
Who starts a side project at three in the morning?
Damon Albarn: OH BOY 3 AM
How much is there to say about Gorillaz and their underrated, 57-minute gem?
Quite a lot, surprisingly.
Pinned with 2 replys?
Wait till you hear about Les Claypool
my mom: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING
The line “the world that Plastic Beach was made in doesn’t exist anymore” being interrupted by a TH-cam Music ad is a genius artistic choice
Using TH-cam without an adblocker in current year? God,
@@WannabeMarysue based honestly
@@WannabeMarysue we’re on mobile. safari sucks and I’m not giving my login info to a third party app
@@WannabeMarysue
People do watch these on a phone.
@@WannabeMarysue maybe he's just watching on mobile, dude.
What kills me is Jamie is a comic book creator first and fore most, yet he has never released a Gorillaz comic. They could easily keep the story going that way.
As Emily said, with bands, extra stuff like websites, games, and yes, a comic doesn't really give the label money
@@freakfoxvevo7915 a comic... that you'd have to buy.... doesn't bring in money? Also why couldn't they do it *now* given they've split from labels all together
@@mothelysium it doesn't give the record label money and only the art and Animation is independent, Gorillaz still has a label for the music side
Right? I’m a casual fan and I’d throw money at a graphic novel series of nonsensical cool gorillas shit
Deluxe reissue of the records should come with a comic
I feel like the loss of the plastic beach phase of the gorillaz website really speaks to the theme of the album. The preservation of the site being left up to fans is much like the preservation of our planet being left up to all of us.
Those lost games are like the extinct animals we couldn't save in time.
Thats a deep take gd
"I can't go on like this."
The funniest thing about The Fall is that it totally feels like 2D would write bizarre and meandering songs about little pink plastic bags during a roadtrip. I will never understand the hate the record gets on a conceptual level even if I can understand why the awkward sound can be offputting
The audience wants the same thing over and over again.
Except when you do that they don't like it either.
I love the idea of Gorillaz members doing "side projects" or sort of like The Beatles, having an album helmed by a different member and their sensibility coming through. People are no fun
I think it’s just because the songs aren’t it. Like, compared to everything else released? Please. But! You are def right about the concept. It definitely fits 2D, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t even hate The Fall
The whole plastic bag being the focus and title of a song bit is kinda amusing considering the meme status of Clint Eastwood's "in a bag" line.
One of my favorite albums by the Gorillaz. Most people are NPC's homie.
Is insane how according to Jamie, Bruce did Stylo for free, so most of the money were not even spent for his cameo
Yeah. There’s no way bruce Willis did that for free😂😂😂😂
@@Puppy_Puppington That's what Jamie said, I don't know why he would lie if that wasn't the case
@@Puppy_Puppington Why the fuck wouldn't he? Bruce has more money than god. He is totally the type of person to do random shit for fun.
@@MANJYOMETHUNDER111 nah, before he retired from acting, he did like a dozen "geezer teasers"* in the course of like two years. IIRC, the official reason given was that he was trying to make sure his family was taken care of, which is not something you'd think one of the most successful actors would care about.
*not trying to mean, "geezer teaser" is the term used for low-budget exploitation films where the majority of the budget goes towards having an aging star be in a film for a very short amount of time, and then paying everyone else little to nothing. It was very prolific on Redbox.
I remember listening to Murdoc's unhinged Point Nemo podcasts, and there's a part that always stuck with me; "Each moment is racing, towards the inevitable. Mankind is racing towards a conclusion, and that conclusion- it’s becoming clearer and clearer." It really landed home the bleariness of the picture being painted.
Anyway, anyone else also realized that this was Gorillaz's beach episode?
Oh shix, it was!!
Is he talking about death?
@@winglessfairy564entropy.
My favourite incidental Demon Days story is how while recording DARE, Shaun Ryder kept saying "It's Dare" instead of what was on the page, "It's **there**". Shaun couldn't say "there", but in doing so created one of the most iconic hooks of all time. Seeing the music video on Cartoon Network when I was like 11 or something was a definite inflection point in my life.
fun fact: "it's coming up, it's coming up, it's coming up, it's there" was the sound effect for the elevator on the gorillaz website way before demon days, the song was referencing the point n click flash game lol
On the Rise of the Ogre Gorillaz DVD, Murdoc says Shaun was talking about sound levels or something they were adjusting, him saying "It's coming up" as it was turned up, then "It's there" when it was right. Shaun's accent made it sound like Dare and they decided they liked it and made into a song
The video was on mtv
Noodle's a chick???
@@optiquemusic6204how did you not know this
"how can an opus be an artistic high point as well as a potential career ender"
Welcome to Orson Welles' entire biography
No wonder he had to do so many champagne ads.
Well, that's part of the reason...
Same thing with Madhouse and Red Line
@@TheGerkuman MWAAAAAAAAH THE FRENCH
Transformers the movie lol
Now imagine how he was doing those wine commercials, and transformers, and whatnot to get funding for Dom Quixote
I was not a Gorillaz fan before watching this video three weeks ago. I have now not only listened to almost every song at LEAST twice, I have also listened to the official/unofficial audiobooks and iTunes interviews. I have watched every music video, gbite, ident, even the toonami midnight run special edition commericals advertising gorillaz. I have spent hours on the wiki analyzing these characters and their artwork. I have downloaded internet explorer just to SEE what phase 1 & 2 websites looked like. I close my eyes at night and see Murdoc posing for the MTV Cribz camera person. I can’t look at two cups of orange juice and think of anything other than 2D getting hit with a handbag. Help me. I am drowning. There is no sign of land. Emily, you have damned me to this hell. Please send help.
This comment launched me straight back into 2010. About 10 days after finding a newspaper with Plastic Beach artwork on the front page that someone had left at a McDonald's, I had become a completely different person from the one who'd only vaguely recognized the characters on the picture as 'that band my cousin showed me when we were little'...
I think hats called getting a special interest, welcome to the club (I am severely sleep deprived)
I’m so sad you missed the Plastic Beach tour, Em. That tour was truly the most amazing live experience ever put to stage in my opinion. I saw the Melbourne show where it was the last show of the tour that featured Jamie’s visuals. At the end of the show everyone was hugging and kissing and doing speeches on stage, the emotion was palpable and we all got the sense that the band was about to breakup. It was so melancholic but so beautiful. As an Australian, to see that many world class acts (including the Syrian National Orchestra of Middle Eastern Music: whose members were mostly tragically killed during the civil war) was such an insanely rare experience due to how expensive it is for foreign acts to tour out here, that I will forever be indebted to Damon Albarn and his sense of goodwill in prioritising providing the best experience possible over profit margins
That was the only live performance of Gorillaz I ever saw, and we danced for 3 hours straight. It was incredible, and I've never experienced a concert like it since.
The HSC exams were right around the tour and I missed it. Over 10 years later, i made their next AUS tour in Sydney. 3 rows from the front of the mosh. Throat and feet raw. The best night of my life.
I was too young (and too broke) to attend a tour like that back then but I remember the pride I felt as a Syrian to hear that an international band worked with our national orchestra especially after all the horrible shit that went down in Syria since 2011. It was what prompted me to actually learn about and listen to Gorillaz
It’s an honour for me and hbomb to be the token brits of this video ❤
Oh dear, it’s my favorite game review youtuber!
ITS HIM DADDY CADDY
I was listening to the video and did a literal double take when I heard your voice, a welcome but unexpected surprise!
Thank both of you for creating an awesome video!
Oh haven't heard you in it yet, v excited ❤
I really didn't know Plastic Beach was disliked by so many when it dropped. I got into Gorillaz around 2015 and that album always stood out as their magnum opus to me. It's still my all-time favorite album. Would love another Gorillaz video since they've released so much good music in the last few years. Song machine is definitely top 3 albums for me
Hindsight brings with it the pared down expectations of knowing how things ended up - I think I liked quite a bit of Plastic Beach when it came out but it did feel very different to Demon Days; like, Snoop Dogg introduced the album in its first track. It felt less gritty, I guess, even as a kid - same-same pop was everywhere and I was tuned into what had Demon Days given me, I wanted more of that alternative vibe.
I don't know - it was a weird landscape to be in if you only knew chart music but now knew maybe that wasn't what you were into - and the way/band you found that out with/through was startingto show signs of that clean chart shape of sanitised spectacle. Can see that was studio interference now, but then?
Same
I loved Plastic Beach and didn't know it wasn't popular lol
I don't mean to sound like "listen here, kid" but people like me who were into Gorilllaz earlier were really spoiled by the previous albums. To me they were masterpieces, just absolutely great albums and we wanted more. I was excited to hear a new Gorillaz album but when it came out... well I wanted more Demon Dayz and Plastic Beach was not it. It was like when MCR released The Black Parade and I wanted more Three Cheers. It grew on me but Plastic Beach did not.
@@NATA5IIeah, it’s like this with my mum too. we both love gorillaz. she grew up with the first two and absolutely loved them. when plastic beach came out she was kinda disappointed, while i absolutely love it. she just wanted more of their old stuff, nothing against them she just didn’t like it where they went musically. she’ll occasionally listen to a new song but she just likes the older albums more.
1:22:58 this bit has the same vibes as fanfic writers casually mentioning some incredibly disastrous events happening in their personal lives when apologizing for a chapter having to be delayed in the author's notes section
LOL
God I read an authors note once where the writer was like 'yeah so I lost my job and my house and had to live out of my car for a while, but here's the new chapter!'
I stumbled on one within the last month where the author was apologizing for being late... because they were recovering from BRAIN SURGERY.
There was one 10 year old kid apologising for not being able to write while writing it AT SCHOOL ON THE SCHOOL PC😭
"Murdoc is kinda like that but for gay teenage girls" I'll have you know I stopped being a girl eventually and he's still the Joker for me thank you very much
Time stamp pls
Me asf
4:27@@winglessfairy564
Funny this line just served as yet another red flag in my now mountain of red flags for me being a transwoman.
Omg kinda same i always loved him when i was “pretending to be a girl” hhshshshs
It's so weirdly ironic to realize that during Plastic Beach, an album about environmentalism, that Gorillaz as a project became unsustainable
It was unsustainable since the first album.
I find it insane how they just drew this and then made the first music video, like yeah he's a comic book artist but the fact it's so consistent and it keeps getting better without it ever looking cheap is a massive accomplishment
I agree
(they're a team of artist, not a single one).
@@creationzikaz4836 right but he still drew most of the key frame animations by hand and for a first timer that is massively impressive and from a new band too
@@Arcademan09
Are you sure? Do you have a source? From what I remember, design was by him only. He’s one of my favourite artist, I must think it’s important to recognise the work done by the actual animators.
After checking, turns out I was right:
Hewlett is the director, not a key animator. I couldn’t find any sources claiming he animated key frames which makes me think this is unfounded/made up. 12 people made the clip under his supervision, they deserve recognition.
Directors: Jamie Hewlett and Pete Candeland
Producer: Sophie Byrne
Executive Producers: Andrew Ruhemann/Tom Astor
Animators: Pete Candeland, Dave Antrobus, Chris Hauge
Assistant and FX Animators: Dave Burns, Molly Sanderson, Michael Douglas, Rufus Dayglo, Nicola Perkiss
Tracers: Sam Spacey, Angeline da Silva
CG Animators: Chris Hemming, Stuart Hall
The failure of Plastic Beach has been something that's lived inside of my head rent free for the past 13 years. Something that I loved that you touched upon was the fact that Phase 3 happened in that awkward transitional period between the downfall of traditional media and the rise of social media. I'll never forget the fact that Stylo initially premiered on Vimeo of all places.
Anyway, it's depressing to look back on this era of Gorillaz because of how ambitious it was. One of the worst things I remember reading about on the old Gorillaz-Unofficial forums back in the day was regarding the live shows; the entire tour was compromised of a lot of stadium sized venues, and I remember users saying that the concerts they attended were half empty...
"New York Times hated Plastic Beach so much you'd think a trans person made it"
Alright, I'm subscribed now, thank you for this amazing video.
Seriously though, your description of On Melancholy Hill is perfect and almost brought me to tears. I absolutely love that song and the video.
Made me subscribe
I don’t get the joke what does it mean?
God, the part about “Plastic Beach” not really having singles is so true. The songs really just don’t work too well outside the full album context. And it was released the same time that pop albums basically died, it’s a wonder it did as well as it did
I really love this album... but true.... i usually bump the whole album
Ironic in hindsight, seeing as the 2020s are the era of pop _albums_ being a big deal again, thanks to Spotify making album listening easier than singles were 13 years ago.
The songs on Plastic Beach are not "hit singles" types because modern listeners have such short attention spans that they simply would not notice songs that takes time to grow on the listener ...
What the songs lacks is hook, they do not have hooks which immediately get the attention ... but anyone who give those songs another chance would be abundantly rewarded by such rich and gut wrenching emotions ... It did take me 2-3 listens to "get" a lot of the great stuffs on the album and there's been no turning back ever since ....
I remember how broken Gorillaz felt when Plastic Beach felt. Not the album but just the entire phase.
It felt so scattered and tbh I was expecting something in the likes of Demon Days.
Now I find myself going more and more to Plastic Beach and really enjoying the album. It truly is a gem.
Plastic beach is my favorite album... It took me back to their self titled album. Just an absolute journey for me.
I remember being really excited when Stylo came out. That was like the height of my Gorillaz fandom - I liked some of their songs and obviously remembered the music videos for Clint Eastwood and Feel Good Inc. from my mid-late teens So I went back and bought the first two albums, loved em, listened to them on repeat, etc. Then everything just kinda… fell apart and after Doncamatic came out, I totally lost interest. To this day, I don’t think I’ve listened to the entirety of Plastic Beach. I liked a single or two off of Humanz, but never picked that one up either.
Well, this video has inspired me to do it. This, and the fact New Gold is a banger. I’m going to give them another shot.
I listened to it on loop for about half a year while delivery driving. Most aesthetic by far
I think that in retrospect, as an at-the-time teenage hater of the album, I wasn't sad and angry about Plastic Beach changing the sound and the band "losing their edge."
I was sad about what Albarn and Hewlett were pointing out: that after 2008, and a "positive" election cycle in the US, EVERYONE ELSE abandoned their pretense of edge. There was a massive shift away from any sort of revolutionary hope or idealism, and we just kind of decided climate change would kill us all, and that yes, the apocalypse would happen, in our lives, but not our parents'. I was angry that Gorillaz were accurately identifying that poppy, cheery, electric sounds are way scarier than the Halloween-core bass of Demon Days, because Demon Days at least told you "you can avoid this, this is evil, with your sound you kill the Inc."
Plastic Beach isn't a happy album. It's one of my first exposures to the nihilism that came to define the mid 2010s and onward.
I genuinely hope the “In Defense of Humanz” is real and not just a joke. Humanz was the first Gorillaz project I was there for when it came out. I remember “finding” Gorillaz years after Phase 3 and when the very first streams happened I snuck them onto a background tab while working in Forensic Science class at school, it was and always will be an album I hold very near and dear to me even if it’s not exactly the best (although not nearly as bad as some say). So I eagerly hope that you do actually make a Humanz video!
Yeah I was surprised to hear that liking Humanz would be contentious; I think it’s great!
I stand by my opinion that Humanz has some of their best songs, but my main issue with the album is that the mixing and mastering are kind of wonky. For example, Submission has a backing guitar riff, but it's so muddled that you can barely even hear it... I really hope that it gets a remaster one day, because those songs deserve better.
call me a hater but i fucking hate humanz
@@taham33 How so?
It's a good album, just doesn't really feel as impactful as the Gorillaz projects that came before or that would come after. It's definetely solid but probably one of the weakest of their lineup imo
As a newer Gorillaz fan who only got into the band around The Now Now, this was a really nice, welcome dive into the world of Gorillaz pre-revival. I'll await that In Defence of Humanz video with bated breath!
Gonna just mention it's "bated" breath, not that it particularly bothers me but just 'cause it's the sort of funny thing easy to never find out if no one mentions it. I thought until last year that one's principles are called "tenants" instead of "tenets".
...wait, do people not like Humanz?
@@telaferrum Huh, the more you know. Cheers!
@@AnnDVine Basically, for the same reasons as the negative comments shown in the video: it was a different sound from Classic Gorrillaz. Even more so than usual. A LOT of features. It was also more overtly political(recorded before the 2016 election).
And it didn't help this was after the longest hiatus of the band.
I don't have a lot of strong music opinions, but I've been saying since it came out that Humanz is getting the Plastic Beach treatment and one day it'll get the praise it deserves
This video is really rewatchable, and it speaks to not only how intruiging the whole gorillaz backstory and stories are, but how well you lay them out to people. Wish there was more to talk about them from you, great video!
This video is a masterpiece. Thank you for contextualizing WHY I loved this band. I finally stumbled on them around the time Humanz came out. I listened to Demon Days and their Self-Titled through one of the worst winters of my life (I specifically remember Tomorrow Comes Today being on literal loop through arguably the worst moment of my entire life), and then Plastic Beach through one of the best but most melancholic summers. Humanz came out (and since I wasn't connected to the internet I didn't know it was coming until it showed up on my library's shelf), and Humanz became the backdrop to an even worse winter in 2017/2018 lol. I stopped listening to them until The Now Now came out. I was in that traumatized headspace until Humility literally SNAPPED me out of it. This video brought me back to that time and really... idk made me reevaluate it in a way that I hadn't been able to prior. Thank you.
I took my first dose of HRT on my birthday while blasting Tranz through my small Bluetooth speaker. This band, as much as any metal or punk band I've grown up with and listen to on a daily basis, has been just as instrumental to surviving the darkest and brightest sides of my life. I still haven't listened to Cracker Island. I'm not sure how my life will change when I do.
Also I will not hear slander of Revolving Doors.
The fact that you're covering my favorite album for over an hour is absurd. Thank you
I never got into the Gorillaz. I remember liking Feel Good Inc in High School and I always viewed the band favorably, but it never went deeper than that for me. I always got the sense from their music videos that there was more going on than I was aware of, and I am now aware that I seriously missed out because everything that's been described in this video is the exact kind of thing I'd have adored and obsessed over back then.
As someone who really got into Gorillaz during the height of Phase 3, I can say that it was only really easy while that phase was going on--while the interactive website and the games were still up. There was just so much going on with so few long lasting sources to draw from that all of the info died out when the hype and the money did. I can only imagine that it was even tougher during Phase 2 when the bulk of Gorillaz' popularity was televised instead of being accessible anytime online. There were the compilation books of Gorillaz lore, but that cost money. Once a phase ended, keeping track of that intricate and dramatic storyline was really difficult to do for free on your own.
"The New York Times hated Plastic Beach so much, you'd think a trans person made it". Emily be crushing it with the roasts tonight, love it.
Genuine question, did they actually listen to it? Like really, it can't be the same album I listen to
Was that transphobic though I don't know if I'm missing some kind of context so that's why I'm asking first
@@hothands8967 The NYT is known for publishing conservative opeds while ostensibly being a "liberal" newspaper, including transphobic ones.
@@hothands8967 it's a reference to NYT being transphobic
@@noviatoria2436 that word has zero meaning now
It's weird to realize there's a parallel universe where gorillaz is just yet another item on the list of Damon Albarns' side projects.
It's been argued that the Mona Lisa is a relatively unremarkable painting (as far as a *Renaissance master's* works go at least), and the main reason it's probably THE most famous painting today is because in 1911 a guy tried to steal it from the Louvre and it made international news. If that hadn't happened, ol' Mona wouldn't have been known that well outside of the art community and some *other* painting would have been in the public consciousness.
Seeing you geek out about Gorillaz albums makes me want to talk about albums and bands I love. Music is a such a personal thing to me that I don't really like to talk about it to others that don't share the same opinion, but you being so unashamed about your love of Plastic Beach is inspiring.
As someone who has been struggling with depression for the last 5 years or so, Demon Days and Plastic Beach are albums that resonate a lot with me, and as such I hold them very near and dear to my heart. I really like that the newer Gorillaz albums actually try to be more upbeat and not so much doom and gloom, but there is just something about early to mid Gorillaz that just clicks with me and a lot of people. I very vividly remember this one time when I was 14 where I just layed down and listened to the music while contemplating my life up to that point.
So you could guess that this video was a treat for me. Thank you, Emily, you're amazing.
Edit: hey wait what the fuck what about broken
I 100% agree, one of my favorite ‘modern’ Gorillaz songs is Strobelite. The funky moves the video that showed how much Noodle was like. daughter to Russ, Murdoc, and espically 2D.
Rhinestone Eyes anger, Fire Coming out of a Monkeys Heads hypnotic gaslighting, Kids with Guns understanding, all just hit me so hard in my gut and chest. Gorillaz is just so good lmao
My relationship with Gorillaz has so far been "I know their two most famous songs, they're pretty good but not my cup of tea"
It blew my mind to find out that those are not, in fact, animated avatars of the band members, but fictional characters with their own lore and (convoluted) story.
Also, thank you for introducing me to On Melancholy Hill, that song is amazing.
Not what I expected to see you cover but I am not REMOTELY disappointed. I love this album so much and I’m overjoyed to see it get more coverage.
I… cannot believe that all along, the Rhinestone Eyes music video I’ve been watching since I was a kid was a fan recreation all along.
I’m gobsmacked. Thank you so much for this video it’s been an incredible trip down memory lane ❤
I cannot believe there's an actual music video now and that the storyboard version was actually just the scrapped remains of the video instead of the intended final version.
I have no idea what these two comments mean. Jamie's storyboard is on the official channel.
@@kasane1337I remember when it came out it was titled that it was a storyboard and checking TH-cam everyday to see if the actual music video came out lmao
4:28 I CHOKED.
-looks at old middle school sketchbooks filled with doodles of Murdoc, then looks at my wife-
...yeah that tracks.
I am beginning to think we are the same person. Growing up watching the Nostalgia Critic, being enamoured by musicals, listening to Gorillaz nonstop & pouring myself over the lore for hours.
This video is incredibly special to me, as is your channel as a whole. Thank you for putting so much time and effort into creating content that means a lot to you, and by extension me (and many others).
1:00:53 After Plastic Beach, I noticed a trend that started with Damon where he would release a smaller baby album that’s more of a personal project varied in scale in-between the larger albums.
For example:
After Plastic Beach, we got The Fall, an album supposedly made by 2D in captivity on the tour / Damon making concept tracks on tour.
After Humanz, we got The Now Now, a supposed 2D project like the previous one. It was small in scope but had some twists to keep it interesting (Ace, Humility, and Tranz being produced by the studio behind Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared).
And after the absolute unit that was Song Machine, we got Cracker Island, another very Damon album.
It’s a pattern that I’m surprised a lot of fans haven’t noticed yet but point out how short those albums are when they’re probably just intended to prevent long gaps like there was between phase 2 and 3.
“There’s something compelling about failure” might be my new favorite video essay opening line. It works so well.
I think the reason for this is that failure can usually be explained: "This didn't get enough money," These actors didn't get along," "Doug Walker," etc. etc.
But success is usually such a weird combination of luck, chaos, and timing that any attempt at a meaningful reason why something is a success is nonsense at best and revisionist history at worst. I feel we learn more from studying failure.
Thank you so much for this video! It was such a joy to watch. Divided into multiple days so I can fully concentrate. I've been a huge Gorillaz fan and seeing all the media you used... That must've taken forever to put together! Thank you for your effort
I remember back in 2018-2019 I had a major gorillaz obsession. I've spent the last few hours relistening to all their best songs. Thanks for reminding me of how amazing of a band they are.
Plastic Beach has the honor of housing my favorite song of all time, On Melancholy Hill, making it my favorite Gorillaz album without question. Really such a cool era for Gorillaz, from the evocative theming to the batshit insane in-universe story being told.
I'd have said the same...but I have to admit Silent Running on Cracker Island cut me right to the core and I can't get it out of my head. And haven't been able to, for weeks.
My fiance and I are getting married in July and our first dance is gonna be to the accoustic version of On Melancholy Hill! For a proposal gift, he made me a music box that plays it.
@@SaltyTreat76 Oh my god that's so sweet! Congrats to you both!
As a longtime Gorillaz fan, and someone who broadly enjoys the fictional backstory's wackiness, but has paid zero attention to the band's wider cultural significance, I am approaching this video like it's one of those person-shaped Junji Ito holes in the Amigara Fault
That's such a specific analogy, lol.
I hate how accurate this is😂😂😂
Are you me because this is also the exact thought process I had
Me too
THIS IS MY VIDEO, IT WAS MADE FOR ME!
The build-up to Phase 3 was insanely important to me. Demon Days was and still is a near-perfect album to me, and I begged and begged my parents to buy it for my 10th birthday. I didn't understand any of the lyrics, but the sound was like nothing they played on the radio. I was left in shock after the "El Mañana" video dropped. Noodle had always been my favourite Gorillaz member and seeing her island crash and burn like this, implying her to have died in the attack, was too much for my 10-year-old brain to handle. The next day at school, I couldn't stop talking about it.
When Plastic Beach came out, it was the biggest and most incredible collection of sounds and songs I had heard thus far in my life. I didn't know that pop and electronic music could sound like that, the mixing of strings and hip-hop on "White Flag" blew my mind, the two-part structure of "Empire Ants", the somber singing by Bobby Womack on "Cloud of Unknowing" blew me away. I remember reading in a teletext of MTV Germany's description for the "Stylo" music video, that the song and album were hailed as "the sound of pop music five years in the future". And I hoped they were right!
It was incredibly dissapointing seeing all the anticipation and tension created in the videos and clips just...melt away. In 2010, I hadn't heard about TH-cam. I was not online at all, and so I didn't watch the "Rhinestone Eyes" video until years later. As far as I knew back then, they dropped "On Melancholy Hill", followed by "Doncamatic", then "DoYaThing", and dipped.
Thank you for making this video and showing the long, complicated history of one of the greatest albums of all time. It is a shame that Hewlett and Albarn weren't able to tell the project's story the way they wanted to. At least we still got the music and Bruce Willis' most awesome cameo.
This might be one of the best videos I've seen on youtube, it encapsulates the Plastic Beach era perfectly for someone that was also there during the pre release, release, and fall situations with the fanbase. It surprised me how much the perception of this era has shifted over the years, but I'm glad there was someone that decided to compile the whole story, and that not everything was sunshine and rainbows. It feels weird to have been part of a fanbase's history during such a turbulent time composed of a lot of lost material, things almost nobody talks about when bringing the topic of the band or the album, and I'm happy you did. Amazing work Emily.
Self titled debut album is still #1 tho
One last thing I want to add, and this is purely a personal opinion, but I think calling every new album Gorillaz releases as a new "phase" makes no sense anymore after Plastic Beach. Back then it made sense, as each album used to have extremely long wait times between them, and all came along with a huge supply of extra material and unique storylines that gave each era it's own identity. But ever since Humanz, Gorillaz is now more like a "regular" band releasing albums on a more consistent schedule and shorter gaps, with some variants in style and presentation but not anything overly ambitious or different. There's nothing wrong with that, mind you, but it feels silly to call something like Cracker Island "phase 7" when Song Machine came out like two years ago and stylistically they're both in pretty much the same vein, same goes to The Now Now and Humanz.
The growth in indie music and streaming has finally given Gorillaz a proper place to just.. *be*, no longer this weird phenomenon they once were, they're just another band like any other, and seems they want to be treated as such. I think they deserve it.
Really glad you made it clear Seattle Yodel was a highlight on The Fall, absolutely one of the most emotional tracks in Gorillaz catalogue. I always cry when they go "yodeley hee hoo"
I'm so so glad you were the one to drop a 90 min breakdown of the Gorillaz into my life. I had no idea anyone felt as strongly about Demon Days as I do
I wouldn't say it's my favorite album ever, so I suppose I don't feel as strongly about it as you do - but it's definitely my favorite Gorillaz album (and I really, really like Gorillaz) and one of my favorites of the 2000s.
i feel like ppl really don't give it enough credit as an album top to bottom; the title track is such a spectacular payoff to the album its beautiful and cathartic.
i could blabber for hours about it
Demon Days is literally the most popular album Gorillaz has put out, and there are 7 billion people in this world
I assure you many others feel strongly towards it
I listen to a lot of music, so I don't really think of songs, albums or artists as "favorites" anymore, that being said I'll cherish Demon Days till the day I die.
For other people who have a similarly strong connection to Demon Days, there's a guy on TH-cam who re-did the entire album using only his voice, and it's surreal - after so many years it's almost like listing to the album for the first time again. I know it may sound pretentious or ridiculous, but it really is an incredible experience and I highly recommend giving it a listen.
@@ajeje1996 dude do you have a link??? after listening to DD for 20 years it'll be a beautiful refresher!
The best video essays are the ones where people simply spill their thoughts and feelings on their favorite things for over an hour. Already watched this video on nebula, but dropping by to please the algorithm gods. Great work, Emily!
I've watched this video so many times but "You might remember him from Tank Girl if you're a weed smoking lesbian" gets me every time
I came into this video not knowing much about Gorillaz. They were one of many bands that I made me go, “yeah they seem cool. I should listen to more of their music someday,” and then just went on with my life. This video helped me decide that I wanted to dive in right now and I’m so happy I did
The doofiest smile spread over my face when I heard the instrumentals of "Some Kind of Nature" under the segment discussing the album's release. "Some Kind of Nature" is, easily, my favorite Gorillaz song, and it's one of those ones that I feel like I never hear anyone mention when they talk about their best tracks.
I did include it in my "gorillaz tracks for someone to try" Playlist. Barely, but I did
Absolutely their most underrated track
What you said about Gorillaz audience being multi-generational is very true. I remember when the video for Humility coming out and wondering “What’s this?” For half a second after seeing it trending, before moving on. It wasn’t until last year with the release of the Cracker Island music video that I actually decided to check out the band, and subsequently became obsessed with it. Over twenty years in and they’re still making new fans.
I was lucky enough to see Gorillaz 3 times in 2010 as part of the Plastic Beach tour. They were incredible shows and they are a band that has meant so much to me since I first heard Clint Eastwood as a kid.
I'd love to see more videos from you covering anything Gorillaz! Thank you very much for this one
Same!!!
I actually really loved "little pink plastic bags" and "amarillo" from The Fall, there is something very "on the road, at night, and its raining" about both of those. They feel nostalgic in the chillest way.
I don't see why Stylo didn't do better on the charts. The rare times I pull out my Plastic Beach CD I still listen to Stylo like 3 times in a row. That song is fire.
So good to see a feature length analysis on one of my favorite albums of all time! Amazing work!! 🎶
Yoooo I love your vids Hoodo! Miss you man
Hoodo my beloved 😭
I was a full-blown G fan in 2010. I remember the whole mellow drama that was Phase 3 and damn this video hit hard. The fandom being torn, the failed releases, the missed tour 😔. But overall this album was so rich and the ideas so huge that it was easily the best thing that happened that year. Thanks for this video it was excellent and reminded me to listen to DoYaThing cause it is fact, The Shit.
Gorillaz' debut album was on loop every single day for 6mo in my room when it came out. Demon Days was bigger and bolder, like the line art had been coloured in. But Plastic Beach really fell short for me outside of "Stylo" and "Empire Ants". It didn't feel Gorillaz enough and that's likely because of its more collaborative Carousel origins. I still don't look back on it fondly but I do appreciate the work the team put in to make this hypertextual work function as best as they were able to. i completely missed the website at that time as i was entering college and the album had disappointed me enough that i didn't want to play along with the supplemental material. But now i get why everyone made a big deal of the Noodle mask at the Humanz tour show i was at a few years ago, wherein a fan gifted Damon one and he wore it for a few songs. "DoYaThing" is still a banger, through and through. Hilarious that Haley died in canon.
Would definitely be interested in a deep dive into Humanz. i quite like that LP, even if Grace Jones' guest spot wasn't put to good use. Is "Andromeda" up there with "On Melancholy Hill" with the fanbase?
There is something to the first Gorillaz record that I can't explain well. It's something about the quality of the recording with the trippy mix.
I listened to it again yesterday and I was just entranced. The song writing is not the strongest nor is it thematically very consistent, but it's just like a sonically interesting and harrowing record. Tracks like M1A1 and Dracula are like really strange horror homages that are as cartoony as they are strange. While tracks like 19-2000 and Gravity are just so steeped in a specific aesthetic that they make for musical stops to just admire the grime.
I dunno, I wish there was a thorough analysis of this record by someone who really loved it because it's so hard to verbalize why it works so well.
Plastic beach, to me, feels closely like daft punks human after all : some great songs being lost in a concept album
As someone who only really discovered the Gorillaz during the pandemic in college, this history is absolutely fascinating to me. I had zero context for their history and immediately fell in love with DARE and Doncamatic at the time. I very vividly remember being extremely confused by the fan comments from years back about how “this wasn’t a real Gorillaz song” since Damon wasn’t on it much. To this day Plastic Beach and Song Machine are my favorite albums because, as an outsider joining late, Gorillaz really is about collaboration. I perennially love the albums focused on guests more than the core four because it really makes the characters feel like a real band that actually does collabs
Lady Emily downright 50% copying the channel Sarah Z's writing style smh
Who???? We never heard of her😅
@@goldhalowings Nah *she* is a girl
@@goldhalowings She is a trans female
@@thecoolguy7985 Oh.
You mean the writing style that's her own because she writes for Sarah?
As someone who've literally only ever heard Feel Good Inc, the slight rumblings of "Robot Noodle is Bad", and "Ace from Powerpuff Girls joined The Gorillaz"... I think I'll listen to their albums, now, after this.
the on melancholy hill description knocked me to the ground as much as the song itself. on melancholy hill has always tightened my chest in a way i could never put into words, but she did it
The main "problem" with Gorillaz is that their music is super complex and there's a lot going on there, and you're often not going to get it on the first listen. And on the surface, their songs can be somewhat off-putting or even just kind of simple sounding.
I think we've all had that one Gorillaz song where we were like "eh, I don't really like this" to "this is one of the best songs ever written".
Fully agree through the first two phases. But as a musician who really pays attention and takes the time to experience an album multiple times, Plastic Beach did reach the "oh, I get it" phase but never the "now I like it" phase.
And that's after being "all in" on the first two phases.
Disjointed for disjointed sake doesn't work for me. Disjointed to make a point works in one song per album.
I felt like I was supposed to be like "wow that's crazy... And deep".
I felt the former, but not the latter.
This is coming from someone who fully understands the technical genius it takes to make an album like this, and someone who loves the Gorillaz. I respect it, but just don't like it.
@@1980JPAever listen to Ween??? 😁
i fully agree, i thought i hated O Green World the first time i listened to it but now I am in love with it and i think Every Planet We Reach Is Dead is next on the list
I totally understand that missed out feeling at 1:00:00. The last time my favorite band (SOAD) was in my state was in 2005 and my dad said no for similar reasons. They immediately went on a 10ish year hiatus and still haven’t played in my state since. I had to fly out to phoenix back in 2018 to finally see them!
On a side note I saw the Plastic Beach tour in Dallas and it was AMAZING
I loved They Might Be Giants as much as Gorillaz growing up, and I had to wait till LAST YEAR to see them in Vancouver. I GOT INTO THEM IN 2006. I HAD TO WAIT 17 YEARS TO SEE THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS LIVE.
I need to see an entire documentary on the entirety of the Gorillaz from you. I love this. Especially after hearing and seeing the new work from the Gorillaz this yeat
I'm So happy someone understands my EXACT bitterness with the plastic beach concert because I was 14 myself and my parents said the SAME THING, also that oakland was "not very safe at night" for a..???? huge concert??? I bought an ipod with the money I saved instead and added the murdoc paragliding game on it, 3 days later it was stolen at school
Okay... I finally finished watching the video. And I want to say thank you so much for making it, Emily. To be honest, I was prominent enough in the Gorillaz fandom back in the day that you and a lot of people reading this might remember me to some degree (mod on the G-U forums, and artist of a 100+ page long Gorillaz fancomic that I still get messages regularly about on Reddit to this day. No, I can't reupload it, it's probably lost forever). And I was *absolutely* one of the people who did not like Plastic Beach when it came out, and I was definitely part of the fandom's general "meh" attitude towards it. It was a really weird album at the time, and I think you really nailed why it struggled as much as it did, considering the time it came out in.
It's shocking to hear that Gorillaz is on Phase 7 at this point. Phase 4 was only 6 years ago!! I thought Humanz was pretty bad and checked out soon after, but I'm happy to hear they are still making music and videos. I have to wonder, what may have happened with Gorillaz if it stayed current with the times? What would Gorillaz look like if it took advantage of the modern trends of v-tubers and streaming? ARGs are hugely popular, and the comparison of the old Gorillaz days of Phase 1 & 2 to an ARG is incredibly apt and an awesome observation. So why not do another multimedia project like that again? Or are they, and I've been missing out this whole time?
Your video might just make me pull Gorillaz up on my phone and take a look again. Thanks so much for the trip down memory lane, and I'm sorry for my rambling comment.
I have mixed feelings about Humanz and found The Now Now a little thin, but I thought Song Machine and Cracker Island were both top notch - absolutely returns to form. Interestingly, they've also been experimenting with vtuber-type stuff with Murdoc in their promotions, which seems like a sensible way to do up-to-date promotions that utilise their characters.
You were meh on Plastic Beach and thought Humanz was bad? Sounds like you aged out of the fandom over a decade ago 😂
@@jslimefeld Are you trying to say Gorillaz is for kids? Bruh. Anyway, no, I grew up on Gorillaz. And my opinions were far from being unusual
@@oddlazdo No, weird takeaway from what I said. You put a lot of irrelevant nonsense in your comment, it's a little hard to even understand what you're trying to say. Literally no one cares what your opinions are on the subject or your "fandom credentials" btw?
they did some vtube-ish interviews around the time of humanz that were really funny, but it seems like the modern trend they're jumping on for cracker island is tiktok style shorts 😔 the music is decent tho, skinny ape has self titled vibes
genuinely don't understand why Humanz gets so much hate, it's packed with absolute bangers, I listen to it weekly
I think the main complaint is that Gorillaz themselves feel like a guest spot on their own album. While the songs are sweet in their own right (Ascension is a blast!) Following up the ambition of earlier albums with Humanz was always going to disappoint some people.
Humanz is the soundtrack of my sophomore year of high school, (which, ironically, makes it pretty hard to go back and listen to, because that was a baaaaaad time).
I love the album, I’ve listened to it over two dozen times and I’ll defend it until the day I die.
I think humanz wasn’t too bad, but was just a bit of a disappointment. By the time of its release, I think a lot of fans already regarded Plastic Beach as an all time classic and were hoping for something that would stand next to it. What they got was what I think is a very quirky album with as many triumphs as it has interesting curios and dubious experiments. I hated it when it came out, but have since come around and appreciate its ambition.
feel like people only hated on it because it's new
Also what does she say at 4:37? Deers? What is that?
I'm a fan of Gorillaz since childhood but because I didn't understood well english at the time, I missed on a lot of stuff I rediscovered in your video. Thank you so much for your work!!!! I hope you will do one about the newer phases of Gorillaz and the sadly canned Netflix project in the future.
I will say this, and believe me or not, but this happened. Leading up to the Melancholy Hill music video the hype was real, at least for the community boards I was on at the time. I can not for the life of me remember how I found it (pretty sure 4chan) but the music video was leaked on this sketchy ass site. So being 13-14 at the time, I hypercam 2'd the music video and added the music on top of it and made a TH-cam channel just to upload the video. It went viral for about 12 hours before youtube caught it. I felt like a hero, although not the case at all 😅 but that's my small fan contribution to the Gorillaz community as a pre teen. Still a huge fan to this day.
It's so ridiculous how they had 2 perfect albums back-to-back with Demon Days and Plastic Beach. Just, an almost unmatched experience.
gorillaz has been in my life so long that its easy to forget what a miracle the band is
miracle is the perfect way to describe it
How could u forget it though
hi misato!
Im so glad that my sister took my daughter to her first Gorillaz concert past year ❤ It was her first concert, at 12. I like Gorillaz a lot and although I'm not a fan, I really appreciate their art.
Btw, it would be amazing if you could share your playlists somewhere. You seem to have an impeccable musical taste :3
holy shit caddicarus showing up in this is my multiverse of madness
One of my earliest toddler memories is going with my dad (a teacher) to chaperone a school dance, and doing a silly dance to DARE. I think it really shaped who I am? You said everything perfectly.
Following Phase 3 at the time of its release, 'lifeboats' had me howling.
I've recently discovered you from your AVGN video and have been making my way through your channel's catalog, and I just want to say, it's rare to encounter an entire body of work that feels like it's made for me. Not only do the topics you choose tend to bring me back to my younger self, but you also provide a level of research and analysis thats unmatched. You masterfully weave together a detailed timeline of the ups and downs of production, public reception, and the landscape of media at the time, as well as what you liked, and why you liked it. You speak on the things you're passionate (or at least, nostalgic) about in ways I wish I could. Thank you for such consistently great content, and for this lovely retrospective in particular.
gorillaz has such a special place in my heart- it was my first real introduction to alternative music as a whole, and the amount it's stuck with me and influenced my tastes in both art and music throughout the years is basically impossible to describe. really glad to see you cover them, the way you describe the impact plastic beach + demon days had on you is so perfect
I'm so glad Gorillaz is still around and doing great, being a fan is an experience you won't really get anywhere else
I was like, "Oh boy, I can't wait for the new to Lady Emily Album to come out!" And I was also like "Hmm, it's a shame that there aren't that many videos about gorillaz, they're my favorite band!" Imagine my delighted surprise!
I will say that The Fall was amazing in terms of it's detailing of the music and where they were at that point in the tour.
I am from Houston, TX and the song "The Perish of Space Dust" was made in Houston as evident from it's credit on the album.
Houston LOVES to credit themselves as "Space City" as we are the city famousley known for the control center during the Space Race to the moon in the 60's. "Houston, we have a problem." Was so famous that Houston took it and it's role as it's whole entire identity. The Houston Astros (Baseball). Astroworld (Themepark), Astrodome (Stadium), and The Houston Rockets (Basketball).
Not only is the title a reference to the cities identity but the sampling was so very nostalgic to me. The radio at the beginning of the song flipping between stations before reaching a Morning talk show reminded me so much of when it would be 6AM getting up for school before listening to the morning talk show everyday. The music is so very electronic but so very country at the same time that it seems as if Damon Albarn tried to imitate a Southern Drawl in his singing was amazing to me.
The Fall, to my understanding, is not only a diary of their tour but a love letter to each place they traveled to.
NOOOOOO I LOVE LITTLE PINK PLASTIC BAAAAGS
I rarely make youtube comments but all I want is to hear you make a defense of Humanz. This was a delightful video and insight to the way Plastic Beach was received, as it happened, which is a form of history in itself since so much of its promo material now is left to fans to compile. I was not 'in the fandom' when Demon Days and Plastic Beach came out despite listening to them at the time, so seeing how poorly some of my favorite songs were received was eye opening but expected with the full history of its production being laid out like this. I was there fully aware for Humanz, and that is something I would love to hear you document. Humanz is one of my top 3 albums from them. So you can only imagine how the backlash made me feel. I'm still bitter to this day that Hallelujah Money was received the way it was when it dropped.
first of all, i want to thank you for informing us that Gorillaz DID NOT in fact do NFTs, because i have been pissed off about that ever since the news broke and then was too mad and busy to ever find out that they called it off??? so this is very welcome news to me, lol.
second, as someone who has been a casual Gorillaz fan since Demon Days but was never able to engage much with the multimedia and backstory, this was a super interesting watch! i remember it took me a while to listen to Plastic Beach after it dropped, since i was kind of worried i wouldn't like it, but it quickly became one of my favorite albums period, just wall-to-wall bangers on that one. it's kind of sad to know i missed my chance to see a massive Gorillaz show on the scale of the Plastic Beach tour, but i am really happy to know they are chugging along and doing their thing independently now, and will hold out hope of getting to see them live in the future. (i was lucky enough to see Monkey live when it was at Lincoln Center, so it kinda evens out in the end i guess.)
also the mention of Murdoc fans hit me like a fucking brick, god the pickle man era on tumblr was such a time
Never really got into Gorillaz before, but this was an amazing video and it makes me want to go back and check their discography again... Your channel truly has some of the best video essays on YT
A day ago, I knew nothing about Gorillaz aside from the name. Since, I've listened to a few songs and definitely feel like they might be a new obsession. Stylo and Melancholy Hill are two of the best songs I've ever heard. I love how this channel does these interesting deep dives and provides just enough information to lure in existing fans and also people like me who know nothing about the subject material
10:15 you missed out largely on the regional importance of date. While overall it wasn’t a massive hit. In the UK it was. The song features Shaun Ryder. Of whome was one of the most influential artist in Britain. But not many other places. So regionally it was huge
God this album. So many memories. This album was not my favorite Gorillaz when i first heard it. But it's now become my 2nd favorite of theirs. I remember blasting it while waiting in line for Coachella in 2010 and finally understanding how great it is. "Your eyes are like factories far away" is SUCH a bop that beat is so infectious.
I also remember that during their set i got up on my then bfs shoulders with a water gun during "kids with guns" - such a fun moment.
I've seen Del tha funkee homosapien perform Clint Eastwood and I've seen Gorillaz do it as well. My dream is to see them do it together.
I remember being so confused at the Rhinestone Eyes music video, or lack therof, as a kid, and those years of my favourite band just being dead, going out with a whimper. So happy their recent projects are so good, though I have literally no idea how well they're doing commercially.
can't believe you talked about the internet explorer ad without mentioning it's LIKE A WIZARD'S PORTAL
EDIT: just wanted to throw in that Plastic Beach's Non-ending is one of the greatest tragedies of the music industry.
I did not like Plastic Beach at all when it came out but the more I listened to it, the more I grew to like it and it quickly became my favorite Gorillaz album.
It really is weird to think of how "out there" it felt at the time, and you captured that really well.
This was fantastic, thank you for the time and efforts you out in to this.
Honestly, I hope you're really proud of it.
Also, super bonus points for having Todd In The Shadows do a guest voice.
Amazing. 10/10
So many of my childhood memories are attached to this band, basically the songs just playing during huge events. Also one of the best summertime naps listening to Melancholy Hill on loop haha.
Plastic Beach took a while to grow on me, but I love it now. I got to see them perform live too in NYC for my birthday. Only weak part about the show was Lou Reed, who iirc was having health issues at the time. God it hurts to think of all the lost media I missed out on back in the day.
Fun fact about the evangelist - during the live tours they had at the time, they had booths (more like giant arcade machines with drawing tablets on them) where you could go and draw your entry for the competition and it would be submitted. Can still remember the character I drew as a sweaty little 16 yr old nerd.
Please tell me you took a photo of your design
Emily! You restarted my love for Gorillaz. I forgot about how much I used to love them. I had their first three albums on CD my brother and I would listen to all the time when running errands for my mom in her best-up 2001 minivan. It was a trip.
I am a simple woman. I see a lady Emily upload, I click on it while cheering at the same time
What a GOOD video!
I remember listening to Plastic Beach while painting my house back in 2010, it was on repeat for hours!
I didn't expect to watch all of that. This is the most in depth insane gorillaz essay video that I've seen. Really goes into everything that made them so important and gives so much context to the media and cultural landscape that it existed in. Every little thing makes so much more sense to me now. Great work
Damn Emily, that's you best video until now imo. I love how you and Sarah always get me interested in random stuff, because you radiate enthusiasm that's just so infectious.
I was never a dedicated fan of Gorillaz, but i was absolutely obsessed with the videos for Melancholy Hill and Rhinestone Eyes when i stumbled across them, and Plastic Beach is definetly my favorite Gorillaz album and one of my favorite albums. So glad to see this passion project from you!
As someone who enjoyed Gorillaz songs without knowing who they were until I fell hard down a rabbit hole at the tail end of the Humanz era, thanks for this. I became obsessed with the lore and finding every single bit of extra or unreleased content I could find. Still am lol. Plastic Beach's huge variety of now lost media haunts me to this day.
It's refreshing to listen to a lore recap/Gorillaz analysis vid from the perspective of a fan just as deep in it. The few other Gorillaz video essays I've seen treat the cartoon members as a quirky addition or mascots of a Damon Albarn project rather than driving factors for the music and plot (and also forgetting about Jamie's contributions completely). idk I'm rambling, but I love this band so much and I think this was a great vid lmao
This is their best album, I discovered in in 2017 when I went back to "That band my dad liked in the mid 2000's" (I was only 17) just as the marketing for Humanz was ramping up. I fell in love, it's great
56:01 joker is a legendary figure in the uk dubstep scene known for introducing g-funk and southern hip-hop influences to the genre in the late 2000s. the fact that his stage name is "joker" doesn't mean his work shouldn't be taken seriously.