Why “Plastic Beach” is a Masterpiece
I think something lost in a lot of music is an understanding of story. Music stemmed from the need to tell stories through verbalized communication that extended beyond speech. Morals, teachings, beliefs, were all told through stories, and then translated into song. Music is not music without the element of story. Even the simplest chord, can make one feel a thousand things.
It’s 2010 and I had recently moved into a new house. My parents played an album that I didn’t recognize while we are moving furniture into our new home. It had a very different sound from the normal Lumineers, Radiohead, Mumford and Sons, and Neil Diamond I was used to hearing played prevalently in my youth. “The revolution will be televised” ringing in my ears and I remember feeling a beat, very casual yet meaningful play that, even then, I knew was something deeper than one would think at first glance.
Even then, I knew something of a masterpiece was at work. See, what makes “Plastic Beach” by Gorillaz work is its asymmetrical narrative. The album starts with a fully orchestrated “overture” (if you will) that’s very rare in a predominately hip-hop album. This is what I liked to call “natural” music. All the notes are played like by instrumentalists through natural means. Yet, the album ends with completely electronic music. “Pirate Jet”, the finale, has very few real instruments playing in the song.
But, why is this important? Well, because “Plastic Beach” tells the story of a world where our beaches are filled with plastic, water pollution makes a man a giant, and the industry music is synthetic and fake. While a man, Russel (the drummer for the band), becoming huge cannot happen in the real world, a lot of the ideas and concepts mentioned within “Plastic Beach” are a perfect representation of the dangers of the modern day. The asymmetrical sound of this album represents the natural world (non-electronic music) and the polluted fake world (all electronic music). And slowly but surly, the entire album end’s completely electronic.
However, this is not a testament against certain genres of music. Gorillaz is very well known for a beautiful blend of electronic and traditional instruments within their music. So why choose this as an allegory? Well I liked to use my favorite song ever, that just so happens to be in this album, Melancholy Hill, to explain why.
Melancholy Hill explores the fake and synthetic world of the modern day music industry. While it’s gotten better over the last decade, when the album came out it was near impossible to do well within the industry if you weren’t conventionally attractive, used certain styles, and branded yourself a certain way. Obviously, there were outliers in this statement, however, I would argue that they had to work three times as hard to get where other big names at the time were. And many of these big names… didn’t make what Damon Albarn, co-creator of Gorillaz, saw as music. The lyrics were seen as nonsensical and two-dimensional and the music hardly used any music theory let alone skill within its works. It sounded fake. So, instead of bashing all electronic or pop music, he created a masterpiece that blended everything. Melancholy Hill uses both electronic and traditional music within the song, showing that neither music style should be ignored. A blend of both truly is perfect, in a certain way. Many of the best songs: Empire Ants, Rhinestone Eyes, Stylo, Broken, etc. on the album use this technique of mixing styles, and I think that was very intentional.
Everything above comes together to tell us this story: Technology and the modern world can be used to be create amazing and beautiful things. But, representing naturalistic ideas and our Earth which gives us life, is key to prosperity. We must protect it at all costs… and “Plastic Beach” by Gorillaz is the masterpiece that says it best.
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