Though it may surprise you, I’ve actually never been one of those assholes who derives undeserved pleasure from the total obscurity of their favorite bands. As a musician, I’m often devastated to discover that many of the artists I adore have found relatively little popular success. If anything, I used to be the opposite type of asshole. I was fully convinced that the average American would have musical tastes identical to mine if only they weren’t force-fed FM radio drivel. I believed it was the sole fault of capitalism that objectively superior music was not more popular. I did not believe the music industry was a meritocracy.

My views have changed partially since middle school (the internet has proven that garbage music can still get wildly popular without the help of a major record label), but at twelve I was convinced that market failures kept the masses from enjoying tunes they would prefer to copy-paste Top-40 hits, if only compelling artists had better exposure.

Ipso facto, I fucking loved the summer of 2005. It seemed as though every radio in every mall across America was playing “Feel Good Inc” on loop. A cursory check indicates that the single peaked at number 14 in the United States, but a completely unscientific survey of my friends suggests that its omnipresence was not a fluke of my perception. For a brief moment, I sensed a market correction, pushing the people to appreciate what I believe to be a perfect pop song.1

Okay, so let’s take a peek at the Perfect Hit checklist:

Catchy bassline

Mellow breakdown

Cross-genre appeal

Singalong melody (lyrical comprehension optional)

Dope music video

Support of a major label

“Feel Good Inc” has got it all. Like much of Gorillaz’s discography, I would be hard-pressed to put a label on the genre. The bassline would fit right at home in an Arctic Monkeys song or a Thundercat groove, but the relaxed guitar sounds might as well be Jack Johnson. While the rapping is a fairly standard (though successful!) guest verse, Damon Albarn’s vocals are characteristically idiosyncratic. Danger Mouse (of Gnarls Barkley fame) lent production help to the track, likely aiding in the “unique but accessible” sound that the track nails.

This hodgepodge approach to hitmaking is at the very core of Gorillaz’s best work.2 A hit like “Feel Good Inc” is more than just a catchy song; it’s a microcosm for Demon Days as a whole. The album is the rare pastiche that becomes more coherent through its wildly disparate content. On paper, a record that combines alternative rock, britpop, hip-hop, soul samples, white boy reggae, spoken word, Shepard tones, children’s choirs, gospel choirs, Julian Casablanca style megaphone vocals, and overt political imagery should achieve neither popular success nor critical acclaim. Put simply, any album that gives equal spotlight to Dennis Hopper and MF DOOM seems an unlikely hit.

But it’s not. Demon Days is the “you really can have it all” of albums. I won’t waste too much time ruminating on how the album maintains cohesion throughout (some combination of Albarn’s singular vision, a consistent approach to production, and thematic unity), but I do want to make it clear how eye-opening this was for me in middle school. My tastes were pretty eclectic from a young age, a fact that made it difficult for me to clarify my outward-facing identity to my peers who couldn’t decide if I was an emo loser or some jazzy dork. I was also starting to dabble in my own music creation at this time but often felt limited by considerations of genre. While The Bad Plus showed me they would not be stifled by the “jazz” label, Demon Days proudly proclaims that the whole idea of labels is unnecessary.

I don’t want to dive too deep into the “virtual band” schtick,3 but it’s worth noting the animated format had two fortunate consequences: it proved a simple means of swapping out a carousel of guest artists, and it allowed for some degree of separation from the political themes of the album.

As a tween, the vast majority of political overtones went well over my head. I had some sense that “Kids With Guns” and “O Green World” were satirical in nature, but it wasn’t until college that an acquaintance suggested that the whole record was one big ol’ concept piece critiquing the Bush years. This view probably overstates the allegorical nature of the album (he believed “November Has Come” was specifically about the US election cycle), but the overarching narrative of the album helps bridge the hits with the more out-there tracks. Putting these words in the mouths of a bunch of cartoons does help give some distance between the weight of the messages and radio friendly nature of the group.

But let’s get real for a second: Damon Albarn is really fucking hard to understand. Like, his actual voice. This has been one of my all-time favorite albums since its release, and I still tentatively mumble along with more than half of the lyrics. For that matter, a lot of the guests on the albums have notably strange voices and stranger lyrics. I’m a huge MF DOOM fan, but I can barely parse the syntax of lines like “She wore a filled-in thong of Billabong / That said “Nah fo’real-a, the Villain on a Gorilla jawn?” Curiously, this is a clever strategy to hide a lot of political commentary in plain sight. On a quick listen, you’ll be distracted by the ADHD genre shifts and zany production to even try to decipher the poorly-enunciated rhetoric. Albarn can really have his cake and eat it too. If you want to dig into the “deeper meaning” of this post-apocalyptic concept album, then go ahead. But if you just want to jam out to some wacky electro-alt-trip-hop-whatever, you’re totally good.

It’s worth comparing this album to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, another of my favorite albums. Both are critical / popular successes with classic singles, enormous cross-genre appeal, a vast breadth of collaborators, and political messages that detract nothing from the fearless musicality throughout. I might be overthinking it, but this combination makes both albums simultaneously immediately appealing while still rewarding repeat listens. They take that Zappa-esque postmodern carnival approach to album construction, but package it for mass consumption

To this day, I’m still kind of pissed at Demon Days. It gave me such unreasonable expectations for what a popular album can do. It’s like trying to watch any other romance film after seeing Amélie. Yeah, you’ll recognize some of the same elements, but little else transcends the medium in such a meaningful yet enjoyable way. Even Gorillaz failed to reach the same heights on subsequent releases. Plastic Beach is another politically-charged collage of styles with way more filler and only a couple tracks (“Empire Ants” and “Sweepstakes”) with much staying power. The fourth album The Fall is a mess of beats Albarn put together on his iPad (yes literally), and the most recent entry Humanz seems to me little more than a cash-grab collection of thoughtless dance tunes.

More than anything, Demon Days is an album to aspire to. Honestly, do you know anyone who doesn’t like “Feel Good Inc”? It has something for everyone! It’s like that Jay-Z / Linkin Park album, except it’s really really good. I got into grad school by branding myself as someone who doesn’t believe in divisions between high and low art. I always try to make compelling and accessible music that isn’t limited by genre, and Gorillaz is a big part of the reason that I still believe that that’s possible.

-Will Savino

1 I actually do have a list of what I consider to be perfect pop songs (limit one per artist). It has been universally criticized by everyone I’ve shown it to. 2 It’s difficult to write about Gorillaz because “Gorillaz” is a fictional band of animated characters, but the actual music-making is basically just Damon Albarn of Blur, plus whichever guests artists he’s collaborating with on a track-by-track basis. I haven’t finalized my style guide yet, so I’m mostly just using my best judgment on which pronouns to use. 3 Admittedly, it was probably what originally drew me Gorillaz. I saw the video for “Clint Eastwood” a few years before Demon Days was released and was weirdly attracted to the visuals, despite my staunch anti-anime tendencies.