Gorillaz Look Back At 25 Years Of Success And Chaos

Marking 25 years of the most recognizable virtual group in music, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett spoke with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about the setbacks and breakthroughs that helped shape Gorillaz. From holograms that kept "vibrating" to the personal challenge of carrying the Britpop image, the conversation offered an honest "window into the process" from two creators who admit they "haven't quite mastered" what it means to exist as animated characters.

Although fans were impressed by the band’s early digital stage concepts, Albarn said the experience inside the venue could feel "awful." Thinking about their Grammy appearance, he admitted, "TV was a win... but awful in the room." The visuals struggled to match the massive scale of stages like the "Pyramid Stage." Hewlett explained the issue simply: "The invisible screen vibrates when you turn the bass up," adding, "and then your animations go [vibrating sound]." During the Grammys performance, the sound was reportedly so quiet that "people were talking; they didn't even know the show had started."

In the beginning, the group intentionally stayed out of the spotlight as a way to "remove the idea of celebrity," although Albarn now admits they were "so bad at it." He remembered one of their earliest interviews in the United States where they attempted to remain in character while speaking on different phone lines: "I was being 2D, Jamie was being Murdoc... that side of things we haven't kind of mastered yet."

Albarn also said he felt a different kind of pressure compared to acts such as Daft Punk. "They had the advantage of not having a face of Britpop trying to hide," he told Lowe. "I was at a disadvantage."

Even with the technical problems along the way, Gorillaz continues to be built on the creative partnership between Albarn’s music and Hewlett’s visual storytelling, which once involved "350 drawings just to tell a four-minute video." Hewlett spoke about their creative rhythm as a "happy existence," explaining how Albarn would share a track and he would immediately "start drawing... every day." That same "freedom to do what we want" is what has kept the project alive for 25 years, showing that even when the holograms shake, the creative "electricity" between them has never faded.