Landmarks of Songs: Damon Albarn

tom chapman
Apr 7, 2016
6 min read

Damon Albarn:

Damon albarn was originally the singer/guitarist of Blur, and began his career co-writing songs with his bandmates. Since then, Albarn has expanded into numerous different musical projects seeing him compose music alone, in other partnerships, collaborations and for other people. He has been the sole songwriter of most of the material by The Gorillaz, The Good The Bad and The Queen and his own solo project. Albarn is very open about how he writes personal music: “The songs are very personal, they come from the heart.” A recent technique of Albarn’s has been to combine visual images with his music writing: “Recently, I’ve started filming something while writing a song, so it just continues. You get one shot of something and then the song emerges while you’re meditating on a single frame”. Albarn likes to write alone, despite his many collaborations: “Songwriting is a solitary discipline”.

Perhaps the main approach to writing music Damon Albarn has had throughout his various projects, is travelling to find inspiration and new ways of creating music. Blur’s first big success was with their 1993 album Modern Life is Rubbish which Albarn wrote most of the lyrics to after touring America. His lyrics on this album were a cynical social commentary on America and what he saw as the future of England, highlighted on tracks like Advert and Sunday Sunday (1993). Later in Blur’s career, recording in Morocco had a similar effect on Albarn. Songs like Out of Time (2003) saw albarn bring in local musicians to accompany the track on a range of more exotic instruments and write deeper social commentary, moving his band into more experimental territory. Before he began to write and record his solo album in 2014, Albarn adopted a similar approach again, by moving back to Leytonstone where he grew up. He said he did this to try and reconnect with his roots and understand his own personal feelings better to put into his songs. Albarn has developed a keen interest in African music, particularly the music of Mali which inspired him to make the album Mali Music in 2002. This project saw him co writing songs in the style of traditional local music, combined with some of his own personal style. Songs like Spoons (2002) show his approach to writing being heavily influenced by the local music and the influence of his collaborators, while other songs like Sunset Coming On (2002) are more typical of his own indie roots, with inflections of Malian style. In fact, the chord changes in Sunset Coming On sound similar to those in parts of the Blur song No Distance Left To Run (1999), showing similarities in his approach to writing. Other examples of travel influencing Albarn's approach to songwriting include Mr Tembo (2014) which was inspired by an elephant Albarn met in Africa, and gave him the idea to write in the style of gospel, as well as his trip to Hong Kong in search of lyrical inspiration for Blur’s 2015 album The Magic Whip.

The desire to experiment has also been a major force behind Albarn’s music, and this has had a major effect on the way he approaches writing music. “Gorillaz was the result, initially, of me thinking that a band like Massive Attack have the freedom to experiment with the whole process of making music.” These initial thoughts then lead to Damon Albarn writing some of his most experimental songs at the time, and adopting a very different process to his writing with Blur. Albarn had changed from writing lyrics, melodies and occasionally chords to being the sole composer and band member for most of the Gorillaz material. Albarn had to start writing rhythms and drum parts, which he sequenced on many of the band’s songs. 5/4 (2001) is a key example of Albarn experimenting with new and interesting rhythms that he hadn’t been able to with Blur. Other early Gorillaz songs like 19-2000 and Man Research (2001) also demonstrated Albarn’s experimental side, featuring predominant synth noises, sound effects and atonal singing which. These songs saw a shift in Damon’s focus on social commentary and personal lyrical themes to experimenting with strange and unconventional sounds. Albarn’s first solo track Closet Romantic (1996) also saw his writing focus on the avant garde opposed to pop appeal with Blur. This largely instrumental track in ¾ is mostly digitally created, and features a broad range of instrumentation including synthesisers, strings, percussion, woodwind and brass. This song also incorporates aspects of spoken word. Closet Romantic and Gorillaz songs were some of his first experiments with electronic music. Albarn has stated that he likes to combine both electronic and analogue music: “Digitally enhanced music can have the same effect as music created in the moment [...] I like playing with both”. While Albarn likes to experiment, he doesn’t often improvise in his songs, saying: “Very rarely do you press record and you start playing, and then it comes out perfect”

When Albarn begins to write a song, often his aim is to convey a form of social commentary. His 2014 solo album was a key example of this, with many of the songs focusing on the issue of how people have become disconnected and too dependent on technology in the digital age. The best examples of this are Everyday Robots and Photographs (You are Taking Now) (2014) which discuss how people aren’t focusing on the real world, and are instead living their life online and in technology. His social commentary on human behaviour was also apparent in Blur songs like Girls and Boys (1994)- commenting on young people’s behaviour on holiday and Stereotypes (1996) looking at how people often hide something below their surface. Albarn’s social commentary on England and the English life has been a major theme throughout much of his work, all the way from songs like Bank Holiday and Parklife (1994) which comment on a typical English bank holiday and typical day to day activities respectively, up to songs like The Good, the Bad and the Queen (2007) commenting on how England is shared and enjoyed by everyone from the queen to ‘crackheads’.

One approach Albarn has had to writing music on several occasions, is to try and cleanse himself and clear his mind of his past troubles with drugs. While talking about the subject in 2014, Albarn said he has used “nudge nudge, wink wink innuendo [...] in the background for years” and has rarely openly confessed which of his songs are about his drug use. One of the only examples he has confirmed is about his drug use is the Blur song Beetlebum (1997). He has stated that the lyrics focus on his experiences with heroin with his girlfriend. One of his solo tracks You and Me (2014), is also confirmed by Albarn to be about his past drug problem. In an interview, Albarn spoke about just how much writing the song helped him come to terms with the past, saying: “I'm happy I found that poetry, I can move forward now.”.

In 2011, Albarn had to adopt a completely different approach to writing music. He began work as the co writer of the opera Dr Dee, which he composed all of the music for. The start of his songwriting process for this project began with a lot of research: “Doing the research has been the most amazing experience. Everything I’ve read has led to something else - Christianity to Judaism, Paganism to Nordic mythology, astronomy to Hermetic philosophy - and it just seems to go on and on without end”. Albarn discussed in an interview what he wanted to put across in the opera about historical figure Dr. Dee, and it showed that even though he was adopting a very different approach to writing music, he was keeping some of his key elements of expressing his feelings and social commentary: “I wanted to use this as a way of articulating what I felt about both Dee’s Elizabethan England and mine.” Clacton (2011) from the Dr Dee soundtrack is one of the best examples of how Albarn has fused completely new styles and concepts into his music and combine the with some traits more familiar to him. The music features a wide range of instrumentation including historic string instruments from the lute family, a horn section, strings and more familiar instruments like guitar and bass. He also employs a renaissance style of singing, completely unlike anything else he has sung or written before. Prayer (2011) also from Dr Dee shows Albarn writing music for a large renaissance style vocal section of both male and female singers of varying vocal ranges, which again is very different to other things he has had to write.

An overview of Damon Albarn’s approach to songwriting: