You're listening to Song Explorer, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishike Shirway. Gorillaz is the creation of musician Damon Albarn and comic book artist Jamie Hewlett. Their virtual band made up of four animated characters.
The songs are written by Damon Albarn and a roster of collaborators. Since their first album was released in 2001, Gorillaz has sold over 16 million records worldwide. In this episode, Damon breaks down the song Andromeda from the 2017 Gorillaz album Humans. It's a dance song, but also an LG to people in his life who he's lost, like legendary soul singer Bobby Wilmak, a former Gorillaz collaborator.
Andromeda features guest vocals by the rapper and singer drum, whose own hit single Broccoli went quadruple platinum in 2016. Coming up later, drum tells the story of how he got involved with this track, but first Damon Albarn, it's Gorillaz on Song Explorer. I'm Damon Albarn. This originated from a conversation between myself and Twilight Tone, a guy who co-produced the record.
We were talking about two of the greatest 80s pop songs, and we decided that Billy Jean by Michael Jackson, and I can't go for that by all the notes were two of our favorite tunes in their tempo and their pop sensibilities. And how could we somehow, academically channel the greatness of those into our own music? So we had a title for this song before we actually started it, which was I Can't Go for Billy Jean. For copyright purposes, I want to emphasize that the eventual outcome bears no resemblance, and any resemblance is purely fictitious.
Twilight Tone is responsible for the beats. We'll tune like this, the rhythm, that was the primary source of the song was get this vibe going, get this feeling, this good solid dance thing going. That in the bass line. In my studio studio 13, I have a fantastic piano, which is an upright acoustic piano that has been adapted to read MIDI information.
So it's very easy to use in the studio. That's my main instrument, but I didn't use any of the piano on the record. I just use it to sort of get my harmonic maps of established. For example, on this record, I used a lot of profit sounds, a lot of chroma sounds, corg sounds, and a lot of iPad sounds.
And that's the same on every tune on the record. No guitars, nothing acoustic at all. Simph bass, symph drums, keyboards, and vocals, because I wanted it to be in the future. The future for me has always been synthetic digital.
Record narrative is really important, and on this record in particular, the narrative arc is imagining something in the near future, which happened in America that really turned everything up on its head and made people feel very uncertain about their future. And let's make a party record about the night that that happens. So it's in the future, it's futuristic, it's fantasy, it's an agianry, or is it? So I got a very basic chord sequence together.
In my usual way, it usually involves a dominant minor chord and a subservient major chord. I try to make all my pop music in the minor key. This song actually ended up being, it's a very personal song. I've never said this before.
I mean, on the record, it's next to the song Andromeda, it says, for Ethel. Ethel is the deceased mother of my partner. And she was very, very ill when I first sat down at the piano. And I was just thinking about her, you know?
And it all just came out in one splurge. All those lyrics just came out, it was just one take the whole thing. The first line of the song is, when the passing looks to die for, when she was in her last few hours I went to see her in the hospital, as tragically as it was, her passing final look and words to me were so beautiful and uplifting. They stayed with me and, you know, overwhelmed me at one point while I was writing.
Thinking of her, I started thinking about Bobby Womack as well, who'd passed away the two years previously. And I just started thinking about all these beautiful people that I've known, who've passed away. And so, you know, when I said, make it for the best times and the growing pains, the good times, the good times. I remember being in tears as I sang that, because I was with them at that moment, and that's why it's got that emotional tug on it.
I didn't know what I was singing, it was improvised, but it felt so falling into that moment. It felt like, you know, it was take the worst possible outcome and be brave and remember all the goodness that preceded that, all the beauty that preceded that. So, I just came out in one splurge and then over the mumps, I tried to articulate that into something that made more sense, but realized at the end of the day that it was an honest thing. Lyrically and vocally, that's how I sang it, that is it.
The improvised vocal take. And I spent literally a fucking year trying to get it right only to go back to the thing I did in like two minutes. It's really annoying. I mean, sometimes you have to kind of put yourself through that kind of torturous process just to really know that what you did originally was the right thing.
But I tried lots of different versions of that song. We did a version with Rack & Bow Man that didn't work. We did a version with Christine and the Queens that didn't work. We did a whole version with Dram that didn't work.
Hey, it's the guy Big Baby Drum that's featured on The Great Gorillaz and Drummer. I got a random call. My manager like, are you down to work with Damon Alburn and the Gorillaz? You're like, fuck yeah.
The nature of Gorillaz is collaboration. I could do it on my own, but I enjoy having people around enjoy camaraderie of that all the laughter. I don't know, it's just cooler because I wanted to make party record and you can't make a party record on your own, can you? So then he's like, all right, I'm sitting in the track over.
And I sort, I instantly loved it because I'm a fan of foreign the floor, groovy sounds. They literally just sent it saying, you know, do what you feel. I always think that it's better if people write words from their own heart and their own experience. So I encourage people just to do their own thing.
I really appreciated that too. So I just, you know, did my thing, sent it over. He's a really lovely guy. It's like very open and honest.
And the song like this, which is very heartfelt, needed that kind of vibe. It's really cool what he did. But, you know, we realized that actually all the chorus needed to be was that really lovely keyboard on it. And then take it.
Just that simplicity, that space was all that was needed. And the bit that he did in the bridge, we kept because that was really strong. The word Andromeda comes from two places. Andromeda is the name of a nightclub in Colchester in the early 1980s, where I used to go on a Friday night.
And it was the only place in the whole of the town. I was a teenager that played soul music. So there's a connection between the music used to hear there and a feeling in the spirit of the music I was trying to evoke. And also Ethel.
The dear Ethel was very into astronomy. And I imagine her spirit, her soul being somewhere in a distant constellation now, when I look up at the sky, because I know she looked up at the sky all the time. So I think of her when I look at the stars. I love this one dearly.
And, you know, I miss it still a lot. So, you know, it's kind of nice that that exists and I can think about her when I sing it. And now here's Andromeda by Gorillaz featuring drum in its entirety. Visit songexploder.net slash Gorillaz for a link to buy this song to watch the music video and to learn more about Gorillaz.
SongExploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons. Special thanks to Zakkamik Knees for engineering Damon Albarn's interview. SongExploder is a proud member of RadioTopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary cutting-edge podcasts, made possible by the Knight Foundation and listeners like you. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.
Next time on SongExploder, Amyman. You can find SongExploder on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at SongExploder. And you can find all the past and future episodes of the show at SongExploder.net, or wherever you download podcasts. My name is Rishi K Shiroi.
Thanks for listening. Well, I've enjoyed it enormously, but I think it's time to terminate this very, very in-depth analysis of my music making process before I destroy the whole niche completely. RadioTopia. You've probably heard me say at the end of every episode that SongExploder is a proud member of RadioTopia, a network of independent, artist-owned, listener-supported podcasts.
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