A2 Blog

Damon Albarn is an English musician who is not as well known or as credited as he deserves to be. This is mostly because he stays hidden behind his strange, yet popular and lore-filled characters. Damon Albarn is the musician behind the world-famous band Gorillaz, alongside his partner, Jamie Hewlett who created the characters for the virtual band. The band consists of four virtual members, 2D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle and Russel Hobbs. All four of these characters are incredibly interesting and have backstories to their lives (as if they were real musicians) which can be read about online. Damon Albarn's voice is portrayed through 2D, the 'frontman' for the band. However, Damon's musical career didn't start here. He was also the main singer and keyboardist of the band 'Blur' back in 1988 through to 1998 (When The Gorillaz were born). Blur produced hits such as 'Song 2' and 'Parklife' which many of today's youth will not recognise b...

What music means to me? I don't entirely remember the first time I listened to a specific music track over and over as I was simply too young and didn't have an iPod or access to music apart from the radio so there were no specific songs that I favoured. However, songs I do remember at this point would have been the classic pop songs played on the radio, such as 'Bad Romance' by Lady Gaga, 'Yellow' by Coldplay and 'Fireflies' by Owl City. As well as this 'Now that's what I call music' also had a large influence in my life as we had purchased the majority of these CD's. As I got older, around the ages of 7-10, I loved building Lego and I remember I had access to a CD player and an iPod Shuffle that I shared with my brother. On the CD player I would listen to the 'Now that's what I call music' CD's whilst on the iPod (which my brother controlled the music for) I would listen to The Killers, The Hoosiers and Franz...

Performance: In this music video by Daschinghis Khan, the star images in this video are the band members, the video doesn't follow any narrative but instead simply shows the artists dancing to the song. 'Thought beats' are also present in this video with the performers dancing to the beat and in sync with one another. Narrative: In 'Why'd you only call me when you're high' by the Arctic Monkeys we see a story narrative that directly correlates with the song and it's lyrics. We follow the narrative of a young man (Alex Turner, the main vocalist and frontman of Arctic Monkeys) under the influence of drugs attempting to contact (who we assume) may be an ex girlfriend or a friend he may only want sexual relations with. The narrative is mixed with special effects to place us in the shoes of the character, allowing us to see what he sees in his intoxicated state. Concept: In this music video ('Pools') by Glass Animals, there is pot...