Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz) | Broken Record

Over the course of his 35-year career, Damon Albarn has reached international fame with two very different bands. In 1988, Damon created the rock band Blur with three friends in his native London. Blur started out as what Damon calls a “classic art school band” before quickly moved to the forefront of the ‘90s Britpop explosion along with their formal rivals, Oasis.
After a series of successful albums with Blur, Damon started Gorillaz in 1998 with cartoonist Jamie Hewlett. Dubbed as the world’s first virtual band, the Gorillaz rotating lineup includes collaborations with De La Soul, Stevie Nicks, Bobby Womack and Lou Reed. The band pulls influence from electronic music, hip-hop and world music, and over the last 25 years, Gorillaz has been wildly successful-selling over 30 million albums worldwide.
Despite having found such success, Damon has never stopped exploring his artistic potential. He’s written an opera, released solo and side projects, and recently, he reunited with Blur to release the band’s latest album called The Ballad Of Darren.
On today’s episode Leah Rose talks to Damon Albarn about what it’s like for Blur to headline international music festivals in 2023. Damon also reveals how Gorillaz are about to undergo a major paradigm shift. And he explains how, according to family lore, John Lennon and Yoko Ono first met at his dad’s counterculture art gallery in London.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Damon Albarn songs here: open.spotify.com/playlist/3BV...
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#music #musicpodcast #damonalbarn #blur #gorillaz #interview
ABOUT BROKEN RECORD
For generations of music lovers, the liner notes on albums were a central part of the way music was heard. You bought an album and it came with an accompanying narrative: a digression, an aside, a backstory-maybe even an invented history. We intuitively understood that great music required not just listening but conversation between the artist and the audience and the audience and the rest of the world.
Broken Record is a podcast that restarts those conversations-in a world without liner notes-for a new audience of music lovers.
Broken Record is hosted by Justin Richmond with interviews by producer Rick Rubin, writer Malcolm Gladwell, and former New York Times editor Bruce Headlam.
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[@OwenL2020]

My son is 8 and has listened to so much Gorillaz over the last year (9,000 minutes) that Spotify says he's in the 0.01% of listeners. The legacy continues in him.

[@leerylifeform]

His childhood anecdotes are surreal. I hope he writes an autobiography one day.

[@tameimpala37]

I regard Albarn as a music genius. The first 'The Good The Bad and The Queen' album is also superb.

[@Droxcy]

Damon is damn genius and national treasure. I've been consuming his music since 2000 as young kid and to this day his music continues to mean more and more as I grow up.

[@layditms2]

Millenial

[@btimec5290]

What a dude, what a talent.

[@Gravitayy505]

His voice 😩

[@NZkiwi-]

Blur is like Doc Marten shoes; iconic, timeless, edgy and good for the soul 😊

[@williammckenna3903]

I've seen Blur Live seven times,,, and each time they have been better than the last 😍❤😍

[@shelahhorvitz3838]

Can't wait to hear his opera. Always a delight to hear an Albarn interview; he's such an intelligent and thinking artist.

[@tatsncatsx]

Utter musical genius! By far one of the best British frontmen/musicians who ever lived ❤

[@harrydelport6220]

Wow wow wow slow down, don't get carried away

[@shaneforshort]

100% agree; definition of what it means to be a musical creative

[@willmclelland1910]

Slow down

[@SonnyBennett_]

Easy, better than those two twats from Manchester

[@catherinemcgrath3473]

I fell in love with Blurs reunion at Glastonbury 2009 even surprised I knew so many of their songs while singing along. Every since then I've got my eye on Damon Albarn along with my ears ❤ the more he matures the better he gets in my (valued) opinion. 😊

[@cloudbne2800]

Fantastic interview! Damon is fantastic to listen to and learn from.

[@artcoloursband]

its cool to hear about Damon's dad

[@patjackson8649]

Wonderful interview with this amazing genius, thank you

[@StratsRUs]

The end of Beetlebum I could have on a satisfying loop.Forever

[@paulemery7353]

I agree. There’s quite a few Blur like that for me . Ambulance, Caramel, 1992 , Out of time , sweet song etc

[@andylangford2658]

Best outro to any song ever....fact

[@sodashiira1894]

I wish I could die to beetlebum it's such a perfect song 😭

[@RunOfTheHind]

The song's about skag, so that repetition is intentional.

[@juliagidlow]

oily water

[@ijw2009]

Great interview and great to hear Damon - have gone down a huge Blur hole since Wembley!

[@dannyholland6564]

Me too

[@vanishing_girl]

wow did not expect that part with the hamsters lol

[@nicolamorgan933]

Amazing ! An absolute genius ❤

[@tylerpurrden]

I have been eagerly awaiting this one 🤘

[@trimmtrabb23]

Blu🎉 r!!! great interview

[@NewPragmatic]

Love Damon. Hate listening to Americans ask him about Song 2, when there is so much more to the band.

[@StratsRUs]

To be fair, it was a different take here.

[@kellydalstok8900]

She was more interested in Gorillaz apparently.

[@NewPragmatic]

@@kellydalstok8900 love ‘‘em both, but I started with Blur, so it’s hard to dismiss such a comeback to the back burner.

[@charold3]

Really? Blur recorded other songs? Did not know that, but I’m an ugly American so I guess I don’t know better.

[@emmaelizabeth3652]

Legend. ❤

[@adrianmccombe625]

Blur are one of Britain's best live bands and the latest gorillaz album is probably the the best album of this year.

[@loveledyouhere]

so cool

[@prismonthethehorizon5793]

Oh those little kiddies at Damon's school, it must have been traumatising when the hamsters got burnt, having a pyschopathic form teacher must have been horrible as he would have gaslit the kids alot, and that poor caretaker who got blamed for the fires, poor guy... what a absolute B****RD!!! Poor excuse of a human! I wish I'd been a fly on the wall watching Damon dance around with the strobe light practicing what was to become his role as a pop star...visualisation is always a good tool! (I had a strobe light too but in my late teens early 20's more for blasting my tunes out and setting the mood for my little gatherings of friends...clubbing those days you partied when you got kicked out the club at 8am 😂) Anyway really looking forward to hearing the rest of the albumxx

[@Wordviews]

I was really hoping Damon would shout out King Gizzard when talking about cool new guitar bands. Not that they need the recognition from him, but I think they deserve it.

[@pahissonni]

Tbh King Gizzard isn't really new, cool band though!

[@666slateran666]

​@@pahissonnithey are newer in the grand scheme of things and are more prolific than most bands today

[@layditms2]

Nevv lol Imitation is NOT Nevv

[@teddyboy9116]

​@@pahissonniand they're shit

[@aaronbastardo7674]

The last king gizzard album is a proof that we have great rock metal albums these times and new London bands like squid or black midi

[@JoeParkerAndThePower]

Loved the Spotify playlist but... nothing from Dr Dee?? Damon's such a great writer. They do an MA Music Composition at the RCA and you can apply for a mentor... my win-the-lottery-dream is to do that someday and get Damon in! Thanks for a great episode: subscribed.

[@jamesupton5601]

Colchester has also been a garrison town for the last couple of thousand years, plus it has this huge military prison called the glass-house. So yeah, add booze and thatcher and you have a great foundation for a art-school band.

[@rodolfosanchez1798]

The 🐐

[@Dostoyevsky1821]

Very cool

[@Andrew-bn7rr]

Great interview, interesting dude. Would like to know more about what triggered a setlist that features the first few albums and omission of songs from Magic Whip, (which I love). Think Tank doesn't really need an explanation though those songs are great. Perhaps it's getting back to more of a collaboration between the four of them and knocking it out quickly instead of isolated studio experimentations, thats my guess anyway.

[@ChainNonSmoker]

It's been told in an interview it is one of their mates that works for 'em who makes their setlists. We'd have to ask whoever that is.

[@RunOfTheHind]

Since Covid, it seems like every band ever has reformed to be a throw-back greatest hits legacy band for the $$$s.

[@JoeParkerAndThePower]

Worth pointing out for our US friends that 'mansion block' in London doesn't mean 'a great big country mansion' but a shortlived type of flats (apartment blocks) built in the 1890s-1930s, some of which would have been posh in the 60s, and some of which would have been dilapidated (now they're all worth millions again of course)

[@666slateran666]

Where is rick rubin? Thats what brought me here in the first place

[@RunOfTheHind]

Jumped ship to Tetragrammaton.

[@betheneytroyer1156]

❤

[@Somewhere_sometime_somehow]

Damon Albarn is talking about new guitar bands but i cant find them or even quite make out which ones he means. Can anyone give me a headsup on what he is recommending?

[@tang0527]

damon's travel part: life talk in england & all over the world for another by 'imagine', Amazing experiences and connections of expression.. It must have been difficult.

[@exiletomars]

I wonder if Damon Albarn likes the band Silicon Teens? They were a band that was one guy named Daniel Miller, but he pretended to be 4.

[@artcoloursband]

Also very interesting when he talks about his 'condition'. I also have this and have not talked to anyone about it (I am a cartoonist and I also make music). I am writing a play (my first) about this ' çondition''instead.

[@StratsRUs]

Son of artists.Trained in music. Can't attach everything to a 'condioned' condition.

[@icey666]

Wow… this made me think a lot…

[@dsgdsg9764]

Frank Sinatra's joke with spot on I don't know what you're talking about

[@ericfernandeske]

Bring back Rick, too many questions asked.. she missed the conversation 😢

[@sombra1111]

I thought she did great. She asked many things I wanted to know.

[@charold3]

Wow, credits for opera Goethe/Albarn? (!!!)

[@margateswede]

Interviewer could have listened to him a bit more instead of just firing off questions from her notes.

[@kellydalstok8900]

She didn’t seem to understand half of what he was talking about.

[@ChainNonSmoker]

Did Damon really had to "reveal" the story how John Lennon met Yoko Ono for the first time to the interviewer? That's like common piece of history, isn't it? or that's what I thought.

[@StratsRUs]

Wasn't the word " Breathe " ?

[@MOiiRAGE]

@@StratsRUs nah "Yes"

[@charold3]

I was thinking same thing, but I guess I’m old!

[@dezfoley]

I'm wondering how old the interviewer is? She doesn't seem to know much about music history, "What's the UFO club"?????????

[@miabaulz7437]

Wish Rick would have been on this one. Still awesome though. 😄

[@ElectricPreacherMusic]

Rick Rubin really isn’t interviewing him..?

[@RunOfTheHind]

Jumped ship to Tetragrammaton.

[@nillab4605]

missy calling him a boomer lmfao

[@michaelkline646]

Great interviewer.

[@aleksandero7982]

Host so dry

[@MrBrutal33]

I'd rather get repeatedly punched in the gonads than listen to this

[@mildredhighcock7333]

and you're whinging to us why?

[@leslyotero9262]

And yet you’re here…