All Gorillaz Albums Ranked From Worst To Best

Listening to Plastic Beach for the first time is truly a beautiful experience. This environmentalist ballad was originally conceived of while Damon Albarn was walking along a beach by his house and noticed all of the plastic submerged within it. This simple idea of nature being polluted by humanity's waste became the central theme of the album.

Immediately, the Orchestral Intro song sets up the beach paradise setting with some soft notes, running water, and chirping birds, before it all gets drowned out by the ominous strings that fade seamlessly into Snoop Dogg welcoming us to the Plastic Beach, an abomination of an island created entirely by garbage. As the album progresses, we hear more and more how the world is being lost to pollution. In Rhinestone Eyes, for example, Albarn expresses "nature's corrupted in factories far away," and the song Empire Ants expresses thoughts on how the human condition has been changed by society and turned us all into a mindless ant colony.

Mid-way through the album, the single On Melancholy Hill is possibly the most emotionally chilling song Gorillaz have ever made. The song and music video make the listener long for a world destroyed by our own hubris. The title-song, Plastic Beach serves as a perfect summary for the band's time living on the garbage island, Plastic Beach, and nearly every other song on the album is unique and contributes to the story and themes.