Plastic Beach is the third studio album by British virtual band Gorillaz, released on 3 March 2010 by Parlophone internationally and by Virgin Records in the United States. Plastic Beach evolved from an unfinished project entitled Carousel, which Gorillaz co-creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett began conceptualizing in late 2007 after collaborating on the stage production Monkey: Journey to the West. Unlike previous Gorillaz albums which were recorded with outside producers, Albarn chose to self-produce Plastic Beach, recording from June 2008 to November 2009 in various locations including London, New York City, and Damascus. The album features a larger roster of guest artists compared to previous Gorillaz albums, including Snoop Dogg, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Lou Reed, Mark E. Smith, Bashy, Kano and Yukimi Nagano from Little Dragon. A concept album, Plastic Beach adopts environmentalist themes, presenting the titular Plastic Beach as a "secret floating island deep in the South Pacific... made up of the detritus, debris, and washed-up remnants of humanity," inspired by marine pollution such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Musically, the album adopts a primarily electronic, synth-pop sound, with additional influences including hip-hop, funk and orchestral. As with other Gorillaz albums, Plastic Beach was promoted through various multimedia created by Hewlett, including interactive websites, animated music videos and short cartoons. The album produced three singles: "Stylo", "Superfast Jellyfish" and "On Melancholy Hill". Further single releases and promotion for the album were planned, but ultimately canceled due to budgetary issues. Plastic Beach received mostly positive reviews upon release and was later named by several critics as one of the best albums of the 2010s. The album debuted at number two on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200 and reached the top 10 in 22 countries, though its sales ultimately underperformed those of the band's previous two albums. The album was supported with the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour and performances at various global music festivals, the band's first live performances performed in full, unobscured view of the audience.
Background
Carousel The creators of Gorillaz, musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, began working on a new project in late 2007 titled Carousel, which later evolved into Plastic Beach, the group's third studio album. When asked about his top priority for 2008, Albarn replied, "Well, I'm doing the next Gorillaz thing, but it won't be called Gorillaz." Hewlett further elaborated in a February 2008 Gorillaz-Unofficial interview, likening their vision to "how the Who presented their movies – Tommy and Quadrophenia and so on" with their films "presented as by 'the Who', even though none of the members of the band were in the movies. ... But it's the same people working on it". In a July 2008 interview with The Observer, Hewlett added that Gorillaz became "more of an organisation of people doing new projects", and that Carousel would be "bigger and more difficult" than their previous endeavor Monkey: Journey to the West; he also stated Albarn had already written around "70 songs" during this time. Carousel was to be about the mystical aspects of Britain.
Concept Damon Albarn got the idea for Plastic Beach while on a beach next to his house: "I was just looking for all the plastic within the sand", he said. On 17 September 2008, Albarn and Jamie Hewlett announced that they would be doing another Gorillaz album in an interview with CBC News. Hewlett said that from their work on Monkey, "we just learned more about what we do, musically and artistically. That's a great place to come at when we come to another Gorillaz album. It doesn't have to be animation and music". Hewlett also expressed annoyance at having to draw the band members again: "I'm so f---ing [sic] bored of drawing those characters. But then we had a moment where we had a new angle on it... I'm gonna adapt them". In a later interview Hewlett said: "they'll be the same characters, but a little bit older and told in a different way". The first time Albarn went to Mali, he was taken to a landfill where he observed how differently rubbish was dealt with compared to England; he had previously visited a landfill outside London to record the sound of seagulls for the album. In Mali, the landfill had "more snakes... like adders, grass snakes, slow worms, toads, frogs, newts, all kinds of rodents, all kinds of squirrels, a massive number of squirrels, foxes, and obviously, seagulls. [...] This is part of the new ecology. And for the first time I saw the world in a new way. I've always felt, I'm trying to get across on this new record, the idea that plastic, we see it as being against nature but it's come out of nature. We didn't create plastic, nature created plastic. And just seeing the snakes like living in the warmth of decomposing plastic bags. They like it. It was a strange kind of optimism that I felt... but trying to get that into pop music is a challenge, anyway. But important." Albarn said in September 2008 that he wanted "to work with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people". As with previous Gorillaz albums, Plastic Beach features collaborations with several artists; it features Snoop Dogg, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Kano, Bashy, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Little Dragon, Mark E. Smith, Lou Reed, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, sinfonia Viva and the Syrian National Orchestra for Arabic Music.
Possible sequel In October 2020, Albarn stated that he had "loads and loads of songs" for a direct sequel to Plastic Beach, citing "the need to keep reminding people that we need to change our habits" as his main reason for revisiting the album's themes. He added, "I'd like to just have an album called Clean Beach, but at the moment it's still Plastic Beach."
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