Not only did he achieve a new and different kind of pop status here in the States, garnering a new and different generation of fans, but he also managed to open up his songwriting to previously unforeseen territory. And instead of a disastrous attempt at reinvention, he succeeded wildly. With Gorillaz, on the other hand, Albarn cloaked his popstar identity in projections created by Jamie Hewlett and proceeded to make music based on hip hop beats and synthesizers, drawing on anything he wanted, whether it was gospel or dub or rap. Blur is one of the bands that defined Britpop and, accordingly, were guitar-based and very, very British. And now, with Albarn leaving both Blur and Gorillaz in the past for the moment, that direction exposes one of the strangest career arcs in pop music. Part of that could be attributed to those songs being much more fun in a live setting than the beautiful but understated Everyday Robots material, but part of it, I would imagine, is that some of these American festival-goers knew Albarn first and foremost from his work with Gorillaz.īack in the ’90s, it would’ve been hard to imagine Albarn going in the direction of Gorillaz. I spoke with fans who knew all of Albarn’s work and cheered for a comparative obscurity like the Good, The Bad, & The Queen’s “Kingdom Of Doom.” And then, when he and his band began one of Gorillaz’ hits, they elicited the most fervent crowd reactions of the night. I spoke with fans at these shows who knew Albarn as “the guy from Blur, with that great new solo album,” but didn’t realize he’d also be playing “El Manana” that night. Of course, just because you might be familiar with “Feel Good Inc.” or “Clint Eastwood” doesn’t mean you know Albarn himself - part of the conceit of Gorillaz, originally, was that they were an invented cartoon band. If you were an indie/alternative fan in ’90s America, Blur would’ve been this exotic safe haven if mainstream alt-rock wasn’t your thing, but if you’re the same age as those British kids who lived and breathed Britpop, chances are a lot of your friends might not know about Blur but are very, very familiar with the pop hits Gorillaz had through the ’00s. For a British person in their early twenties, Britpop was ubiquitous as they were growing up - there’s no way you didn’t know who Blur was, even if they were already defunct by the time you were in your early teens and perhaps exploring music for the first time.
One of the obvious divides is nationality, but the crucial qualifier is age. Over the course of the last three months, I’ve seen Damon Albarn perform four times, and a certain quality of his career was boldly underlined: there are great disparities between who knows him, where they know him from, and where they know him from without realizing it.
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