The Atlantic

Gorillaz's Drab Doomsday Dance Party

Damon Albarn’s many contributors seemed boxed in for <em>Humanz</em>, which dubiously imagines a dystopian blow-out.
Source: Mark Allan / AP

The most successful singles of Damon Albarn’s bands Blur and Gorillaz have been the meta ones—the ones that warn of pop music as an opiate for the masses while themselves serving as pretty excellent opiates for the masses. Radio listeners headbanged to thewoo-hoos in “Song 2” meant to mock their tastes; “Coffee and TV” pleasantly diagnosed a society of full ears and empty brains; Gorillaz’s two smashes, “Clint Eastwood” and “Feel Good Inc.,” sarcastically serenaded mass-produced pleasure and “sunshine in a bag.” Albarn he writes all of his pop in a minor key,

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