10 Legendary Concept Records Of The 2010's
6. Plastic Beach - Gorillaz
No one who jumped on the Gorillaz bandwagon back in the day thought that Damon Albarn's little side project was going to make you feel things. Even on Demon Days when he proved that his project wasn't a fluke, you could see these animated videos being more entertaining for children watching MTV than the intellectual side of music. Then again, Demon Days was supposed to prepare us for the nightmares of the world. On Plastic Beach, we had an actual nightmare to worry about.
Despite the summer day at the beach vibe of a lot of these songs, Damon has an environmental message to spread, creating a satire of what can happen if you let waste go too far. In the Gorillaz lore, the whole concept of the Plastic Beach was Murdoc settling on an island made up entirely of polluted wasted and spray painting it pink, as the rest of the band try to make music there. For the most part, this is just Damon trying to put a happy face on the horrors going on around us, and leading to some of the most adventurous songs in the Gorillaz catalog.
With a star studded cast in tow, every single one of these songs seems to go in another wild direction, from the trip hop kind of beat in Rhinestone Eyes to the gentle ballad Melancholy Hill to putting Lou Reed's monotone voice in just the right place on Some Kind of Nature. Before the music though, Plastic Beach is trying to make you walk away with a lesson. If we don't do something now, that plastic is going to look a lot rougher down the road.