Plastic Beach
Plastic Beach is the third studio album by British virtual band Gorillaz, released on 3 March 2010 by Parlophone internationally and by Virgin Records in the United States.
Plastic Beach evolved from an unfinished project entitled Carousel, which Gorillaz co-creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett began conceptualizing in late 2007. Unlike previous Gorillaz albums which were recorded with outside producers, Albarn chose to self-produce Plastic Beach, recording from June 2008 to November 2009 in various locations including London, New York City, and Damascus. The album features a larger roster of guest artists compared to previous Gorillaz albums, including Snoop Dogg, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Lou Reed, Mark E. Smith, Bashy, Kano and Little Dragon.
A concept album, Plastic Beach adopts environmentalist themes, presenting the titular Plastic Beach as a "secret floating island deep in the South Pacific... made up of the detritus, debris, and washed-up remnants of humanity," inspired by marine pollution such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Musically, the album adopts a primarily electronic, synth-pop sound, with additional influences including hip-hop, funk and orchestral. As with other Gorillaz albums, Plastic Beach was promoted through various multimedia created by Hewlett, including interactive websites, animated music videos and short cartoons. The album produced three singles: "Stylo", "Superfast Jellyfish" and "On Melancholy Hill". Further single releases and promotion for the album were planned, but ultimately canceled due to budgetary issues.
Plastic Beach received mostly positive reviews upon release and was later named by several critics as one of the best albums of the 2010s. The album debuted at number two on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200 and reached the top 10 in 22 countries, though its sales ultimately underperformed those of the band's previous two albums. The album was supported with the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour and performances at various global music festivals, the band's first live performances performed in full, unobscured view of the audience.
Background
''Carousel''
The creators of Gorillaz musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, began working on a new project in late 2007 titled Carousel, which later evolved into Plastic Beach, the group's third studio album. When asked about his top priority for 2008, Albarn replied, "Well, I'm doing the next Gorillaz thing, but it won't be called Gorillaz." Hewlett further elaborated in a February 2008 Gorillaz-Unofficial interview, likening their vision to "how the Who presented their movies – Tommy and Quadrophenia and so on" with their films "presented as by 'the Who', even though none of the members of the band were in the movies.... But it's the same people working on it". In a July 2008 interview with The Observer, Hewlett added that Gorillaz became "more of an organisation of people doing new projects", and that Carousel would be "bigger and more difficult" than their previous endeavor Monkey: Journey to the West; he also stated Albarn had already written around "70 songs" during this time. Carousel was to be about the mystical aspects of Britain.Concept
Damon Albarn got the idea for Plastic Beach while on a beach next to his house: "I was just looking for all the plastic within the sand", he said. On 17 September 2008, Albarn and Jamie Hewlett announced that they would be doing another Gorillaz album in an interview with CBC News. Hewlett said that from their work on Monkey, "we just learned more about what we do, musically and artistically. That's a great place to come at when we come to another Gorillaz album. It doesn't have to be animation and music". Hewlett also expressed annoyance at having to draw the band members again: "I'm so f---ing bored of drawing those characters. But then we had a moment where we had a new angle on it... I'm gonna adapt them". In a later interview Hewlett said: "they'll be the same characters, but a little bit older and told in a different way".The first time Albarn went to Mali, he was taken to a landfill where he observed how differently rubbish was dealt with compared to England; he had previously visited a landfill outside London to record the sound of seagulls for the album. In Mali, the landfill had "more snakes... like adders, grass snakes, slow worms, toads, frogs, newts, all kinds of rodents, all kinds of squirrels, a massive number of squirrels, foxes, and obviously, seagulls. This is part of the new ecology. And for the first time I saw the world in a new way. I've always felt, I'm trying to get across on this new record, the idea that plastic, we see it as being against nature but it's come out of nature. We didn't create plastic, nature created plastic. And just seeing the snakes like living in the warmth of decomposing plastic bags. They like it. It was a strange kind of optimism that I felt... but trying to get that into pop music is a challenge, anyway. But important."
Albarn said in September 2008 that he wanted "to work with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people". As with previous Gorillaz albums, Plastic Beach features collaborations with several artists; it features Snoop Dogg, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Kano, Bashy, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Little Dragon, Mark E. Smith, Lou Reed, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, sinfonia Viva and the Syrian National Orchestra for Arabic Music.
Possible sequel
In October 2020, Albarn stated that he had "loads and loads of songs" for a direct sequel to Plastic Beach, citing "the need to keep reminding people that we need to change our habits" as his main reason for revisiting the album's themes. He added, "I'd like to just have an album called Clean Beach, but at the moment it's still Plastic Beach."Recording
Albarn began recording material for a new Gorillaz album around June 2008. He travelled to Beirut in March 2009 to record with the National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music. The following month, he recorded with Derby-based orchestra sinfonia Viva. Grime MCs Kano and Bashy, who feature on "White Flag", both had the flu during recording. Kano said, "We weren't feeling great, the music was out of our comfort zone, it could have been a complete disaster". Bobby Womack knew nothing about Gorillaz and was initially unsure about the collaboration, however, his daughter liked Gorillaz and convinced him to do it. Womack was told to sing whatever was on his mind during the recording of "Stylo". "I was in there for an hour going crazy about love and politics, getting it off my chest", said Womack. After an hour of recording, Womack, a diabetic, started to pass out. He was sat down and given a banana, before waking up minutes later. "Sweepstakes", the first song Mos Def recorded with Gorillaz, was done in one take. Mos Def described the song as "one of the greatest things as an MC that I've ever done". Mick Jones and Paul Simonon completed their portion of the title track "Plastic Beach" in a day."This record has only scratched the surface of period of work and the sort of adventures we went on," he said. The unreleased material is "some really out-there stuff, which hopefully will see the light of day at some point". Among these is a song Gorillaz wanted to record with Engelbert Humperdinck. "He was supposed to do it, but then he declined, which was a real shame", Albarn explained to New York magazine. "It's a very dramatic song, very moving. Arabic strings. It's imagining Earth losing its gravitational pull and starting to fall". As it turned out, Humperdinck's manager had listened to the proposed selection and declined the offer for him without his knowing. Humperdinck later stated in an interview that his manager declining the collaboration offer was "the most grievous sin ever committed", and that he would have gladly collaborated with Gorillaz if he had known they asked. With or without Humperdinck, Albarn insists the tune will eventually be released. "I'm going to finish that off", he said. "It just needs the vocal. We've made contact with Indian singer Asha Bhosle and I think it's definitely going to happen. I'll maybe duet with her; the song has these answering phrases". The band were also rebuffed by former Sex Pistols' frontman John Lydon and Tom Waits.
Several musicians who collaborated on songs for the album did not end up having all or any of their songs appear on the final album; some guests announced to have collaborated with the band do not feature on the album. British garage rock band The Horrors were invited to play on the album after Albarn heard their 2009 album Primary Colours. They recorded a track with Albarn, but no songs with the band appear on the final album. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Posdnuos of De La Soul said that the group had provided vocals on two songs for the album, "Electric Shock" and "Sloped Tropics". De La Soul only features on one song on the album, titled "Superfast Jellyfish". Gruff Rhys recorded two songs – "Superfast Jellyfish" and "Leviathan". The latter, described by Rhys as "more of a night-time song, a three o'clock in the morning, speeding down the autobahn evading West German police-type track", does not feature on the album. Mos Def said that he collaborated with Albarn on three songs; however, Def only appears on two songs on the album. In a 2023 interview with Zane Lowe, Albarn confirmed the third song was called "Fresh Arrivals" and additionally featured Syrian dabke artist, Omar Souleyman – the song was later re-worked as "Damascus" from the band's 9th studio album, The Mountain with both artists. Albarn had previously announced that musician Barry Gibb would feature on the album but Gibb did not turn up to any recording sessions.