Albarn - who handles Gorillaz’ music, while Hewlett oversees visuals - started the band as an outlet for his interests outside of indie music, notably in hip-hop and dub, with the use of virtual characters freeing him up to indulge his inner pop fan. Unlike the band’s videos, that has aged extremely well. This can be forgiven, though, for Gorillaz’ music. Well drawn out as the characters might be, the idea of another interview in which the band’s four animated members - 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel - sketch out elaborate tales of prison escape/being swallowed by a whale/brand hook ups is, frankly, nauseating. The idea of Gorillaz as virtual stars became extremely wearing early on in their career, however. It’s like watching an old Scooby Doo cartoon from the 1970s - simultaneously reassuring in its nostalgia and vaguely dazzling in its roughness. Looking back on Gorillaz’ early videos - ‘Clint Eastwood’’s simian zombie apocalypse or ‘Tomorrow Comes Today’’s hallucinatory cityscapes - it is remarkable how crude they look today, in a world of slick digital animation. But Gorillaz’ free-form approach to music making, which combines pop melodies with hip-hop production and an ever-rotating cast of special guests, essentially is the pop blueprint these days, a remarkable achievement for a band formed by the brains behind Blur and comic book artist Jamie Hewlett. In 2021, two long decades on, the idea of the virtual pop star has yet to take off, with the upper reaches of the charts still resolutely dominated by works of flesh and bone. They were, it turned out, but not in the way that most people envisaged. When Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz loped onto the scene with their self-titled debut album in 2001, this virtual band looked like it might be the future.

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