An alternative rock, hip-hop and electronica band made up of animated characters? Maybe you heard of them, but this band was one of the most popular between 2000’s-2010’s, but after that time they were not as relevant as their beginnings. However, recently they are starting to grab more attention. This band is called “Gorilllaz”, and it is fully animated, which may sound weird to many people.  

    Sophomore Isidro Banderas says, “The band being fully animated is fun, because you can show and create more things in an animation or in a drawing than a real-life picture, if you are not using CGI.” 

    Sophomore Lucian Paz states that “The band being fully animated isn’t a bad or weird choice.  It is something that differentiates them from other artists and you can laugh or cry with the characters.” 

People knowing them 

      It is obvious that people will have different experiences related to their first encounter with the band. “One day my brother approached me and recommended me the song called ‘Feel Good Inc’, says junior Ernesto Carbonell. After that day he researched a lot of the band, finding new songs, silly animations of the characters, listening to albums and today it’s his favorite musical band.  

     Senior Gabriel Arrillaga was always in the genre, and at that time he was listens to other bands like “Slipknot” or “Korn”. He was on his YouTube channel one day, and he found Gorillaz. At the beginning he didn’t pay much attention to them, but he gave them a chance, and after hearing their music, Gorillaz caught his attention. 

People’s feelings and opinions 

     People feel different emotions when listening to Gorillaz. Sophomore Haysil Diaz, a fan, states, “What I feel about the music in general is more chaotic, depending on which album I’m listening to.” Sophomore Isidro Banderas, a casual listener, says, “It has something special, I listen to the Plastic Beach, so it feels relaxing and at the same time chaotic.” We can see how Gorillaz has a variety of styles in their music so that everyone can enjoy at least one song. 

How and why the band was created 

     According to the documentary movie “Gorillaz Bananaz”, the band began as an experimental collision of the art of drawing and the art of music, in the late ‘90s when artist Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett shared something in common. They got tired of what was on MTV at that moment, they wanted something new.  

    As Hewlett says, “If you watch MTV for too long. It’s a bit like hell-there’s nothing of a substance there. So, we got this idea for a virtual band.” Their answer was Gorillaz, where they make the characters and mix different types of music with satire and storytelling, allowing them to criticize pop culture.  

The Band Evolution Through the Years 

     The same documentary states that their 2001 self-titled album stunned critics by turning a virtual band into a real music hit.   Albarn explained, “This is my laboratory.”  Tracks like “Clint Eastwood” made the animated group more than a gimmick. The album Demon Dayz featured a #1 song around many countries, “Feel Good Inc.” 

     In 2010, the projects reached a peak with Plastic Beach about environmental collapse, featuring collaborators from Snoop Dogg to Lou Reed. After that, Albarn and Hewlett had tension between them and their project entered a hiatus for many years. But they came back in 2017 with the album Humanz followed by The Now Now in 2018 and the collaborative Song Machine series featuring artists such as Elton John an Slowthai