Damon Albarn
From helping create a musical movement in the 90’s to creating some of the most memorable music of this decade Damon Albarn is one of the most influential people to come out of the 90’s. Damon first came into the public spotlight when he and childhood friend Graham Coxon along with Alex James and Dave Rowntree formed Blur. The band are seen as the leaders of the Britpop movement of the UK and helped create the movement itself with albums such as Parklife and Modern Life is Rubbish. Throughout the 90’s the band released 6 successful (a few some even being iconic) albums during the decade with a small army of hit singles that are just as memorable as they are good with such as Girls & Boys, Tender, Country House, Song 2. With Alban as lead singer and lyricist along with Coxon on guitar and songwriting they became like Morrissey and Jonny Marr before them the most important songwriting partnership of that era. When Britpop had to began to come to it’s demise in the late 90’s the bands were able to change their sound all together and evolve. When Coxon left the band at the beginning of the millennium the band managed to solider on with the release Think Tank in 2001 and saw all the tracks entirely composed by Albarn. In the same year Albarn released an album called Gorillaz. The project was created by Damon and graphic artist Jamie Hewlett in the late 90’s as a virtual band. The band itself was a collaborative effort mixing Albarn with different musicians from a wide variety of genres. While the bands image and look was to Jamie’s credit, the music itself was to Albarn‘s. The first album Gorillaz was critically and commercially successful and the follow up Demon Days released in 2005 managed to top its predecessor . In 2006 Damon embarked on another collaborative project (which saw him as leader again) The Good, The Band, & The Queen. The band was a super group consisting of Damon himself, Paul Simonon of the Clash, Simon Tong of the Verve (who had worked with Damon on the Gorillaz) and composer Tony Allen. The band released it’s self titled album the following year which was hailed by critics and sold well. In 2007 Damon and Jamie Hewlett did the unexpected and released a Chinese opera largely based on the 16th century novel Journey to the West. The opera Monkey: Journey to the West was like the Gorillaz composed by Albarn with visual art by Hewlett. Directed by Chen Shi-Zheng the opera was a success and was even briefly featured at the 2008 Summer Olympics, held in Beijing. In 2009 Blur reunited with Coxon and headlined Glastonbury’s pyramid stage (which they had done twice before) among headlining other UK & European festivals to the great pleasure of the audience. The band has talked about releasing new materiel but nothing has been confirmed but the Gorillaz are planning to release a third album Carousel sometime between 2009 and 2010. Damon Albarn with all of his accomplishments and memorable music will certainly be a staple in music fans hearts.