1 post tagged “alternative”

I've been trying to avoid doing Gorillaz since I'm increasingly biased in their favor, but I figure I could be more critical of this song since I've never been a fan. I say this now but I probably will go back to praising the heavens for their songs like Dare and El Manana. 

Lets start out with the song itself.  I didn't have a clue about what this song is all about until recently despite the fact that I've listened to the song numerous times before.

Judging from the condition that is explained by "drinking too much," the speaker is drunk or something of the kind. He seems too drunk to even finish his sentences because of it.  The chorus explains the reason for drinking, especially this line:

So, there's the first verse and the chorus.  After that runs through, the very same verse repeats again and again. I'm normally not a fan when a song does that, but I can normally forgive a song that does that.  I mean, I didn't hold that against the Killer's Mr. Brightside. I really love that song.  Anyway, back to this.

I'm not really sure how to explain this, but this song bores me to tears.  I think its the only Gorillaz song that I don't like.  Don't quite quote me on that, I'll need to check that for sure.  Just be sure that I love practically all their songs and this is not one of the songs and I'll tell you why.  Listening to this song is the equivalent of listening to someone fool around on a drum-set.  While interesting for a while since it ISN'T the same thing over and over again, it gets really boring after a while.  You loose track of where you are in the song.

Now let's get to the video.  The overall feeling of the video is also repetitive in left you with the feeling of "wait... that's it?"  

The video starts out with a shot of zombie shadows with the words "zombie flesh eaters" showing up.  Then once the video starts, a statue of some kind of lizard/reptile creature is shown... well just the face at first.  "Rock it" is shown.  There's a lot of words shown in the video.  Those already mentioned are the first of many.

Well, I suppose for those ignorant ones, Gorillaz is a cartoon band.  The blue haired dude, 2-D, is the lead singer.  The girl he was giving a piggy-back ride throughout the video is Noodle, the guitarist.  Murdoc, the bassist, and Russel, drums, have very short cameos in this video.  But Murdoc is the one with a very green skin tone while Russel is not.  Normally, all of them are playing whatever instrument they play in music videos but this one doesn't. 

So the video starts out with this really creepy close-up of 2-D's face.  For some reason, his eyes being white really makes my soul shiver.  After that whole close-up, the video establishes the band strolling through a foggy area with tree branches growing towards them.  If you are obsessed with the Gorillaz as much as I am, you'll know that the group is going towards Kong Studios, the Gorillaz HQ per-say. Appearantly a lot of crazy shit happens outside that place in music videos and such.  Another example of this would be in the Clint Eastwood video.  Possessed gorillas were running about in that video.

While the group is walking, plants bloom out zombie heads of what represent celebrities, or what they establish at the end of the video as false icons. Random words that don't make sense mixed in with "bla bla bla bla...." pop out from the zombie heads.  The band totally ignore all of these heads.  Even at one point, they walk all over the ones on the ground. So the rest of the video consists of flashes of the heads, the creepy close-up of 2-D, the gang just walking, and the statue mouthing off "rock it." The video ends with the group walking by the statues and later showing the words "Reject False Icons."

I easily find that the video has nothing to do with the message of the actual song.  I can't entirely hate the music video because of the message it sends out, but I can say that it was just as boring as the song.  The same animations for the characters are used over, and over again.  I almost didn't finish the video the very first time I ever watched it. I kept on watching it in hopes that something cool or interesting might happen, but that something never came.  They might as well just say "reject false icons" and let us move on. I see the video and the song at the same level of 3/10.  Gorillaz has definitely done better and you know it.