New Gorillaz album - Cracker Island

[TristramShandy]

Yes, good track, although the autotune spoils it a bit (my opinion).

[VictorWard]

Really enjoying how groovy the new tracks are. Very excited for the album.

[John_d]

Silent Running sounds very bland to me. Like something bbc radio 2 would play. It could have been made in any year since 1985ish. It's not bad at all, just unremarkable and missing the weird elements of the best gorillaz songs. Interesting that it seems to possibly be getting a better reception than Skinny Ape. Which I thought was terrific.

[jonathas]

Neither do it for me. I liked the Song Machine stuff a lot but the production aesthetic of the new stuff is simply located somewhere outside of my tastes. Happy to see Damon continue to write successful, rather brilliant pop songs, but definitely not going to be getting many plays in this parish.

[northernmonkey]

From what has been released so far, I think this will work well as an album, seems to have got the running order spot on without being able to fill in the blanks. It doesn’t seem to be too reliant on guests and great vocals from Damon, I think my only complaint is the music behind Damon feels a little on the cut and paste Gorillaz beats. I think both Song Machine and The Now Now sounded like more real in this department. I think Song Machine was one of the most guest list filled albums, but this worked as Damon’s presence was all over the album, compared to something like Humanz.

Great new single, each song doesn’t hit me on first listen, but after a few listens I am humming along throughout my day with little choice

[Rubi]

I think Silent Running is my new favorite Gorillaz song. The melody is truly beautiful, and the vocals and musical arrangements are spotless. Cracker Island is by far going to be the best Gorillaz album since Plastic Beach.

[Daft_Wader]

Yeah, if the rest of the album is as good as the almost half (!) we've heard so far I think this will be my favorite Phase since Plastic Beach. The story has been getting interesting lately, and the music has been great too. I've enjoyed everything since the reunion well enough, but I suspect Cracker Island will top the list.

[JackS]

I see Silent Running made the Radio 2 B-List - I don't think Gorillaz have been playlists on Radio 2 for a long time

[Neal Zeal]

I see Silent Running made the Radio 2 B-List - I don't think Gorillaz have been playlists on Radio 2 for a long time

Actually, I think they did on a fairly recent single. I remember commenting on it.
But still pretty unusual.
As it's entered this week on the B-list, it could always jump up to the A which would make a fair difference to audience reach.
Alas, no sign of it though on One FM...

[aldamasta]

Cracker Island could do some really good numbers once it’s released. Successful singles, some potentially big streaming tracks to come (mainly the Bad Bunny collab.) And Silent Running’s video comes out tomorrow, which I assume could help it.

[John_d]

I see Silent Running made the Radio 2 B-List - I don't think Gorillaz have been playlists on Radio 2 for a long time

It sounds to me, for better or worse, like it's been grown in a lab to get played on Radio 2. What else has made it on there since OMH? Humility?

[idreamofpikas]

Cracker Island could do some really good numbers once it’s released. Successful singles, some potentially big streaming tracks to come (mainly the Bad Bunny collab.) And Silent Running’s video comes out tomorrow, which I assume could help it.

Already doing good numbers. It's just passed 140 million streams on Spotify, including the New Gold remix. It was December 2020 (two months after it release) that Song Machine reached that number. Weirdly, I remember making a post about it on this forum viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3382&start=465

New Gold is going to be the quickest Spotify era Gorillaz song to reach 100 million. It also has a remix that's doing really well. Cracker Island will take a little longer to reach 100 million, sometime in 2024, but on Spotify it's a similar level to Humility, Saturn Barz and Andromeda.

The wild card will be the Bad Bunny collab. But this album is guaranteed to do better than Song Machine, at the very least on par with Now Now and possibly close to Humanz. The Humanz album has over 1 million equivalent album sales on Spotify.

The only mistep was the release of Skinny Ape video the week of christmas. It got buried in the festive season, which is a shame as it's a cute video and showed the band trying something pretty unique.



In other Spotify news Blur has gone from 8ish million unique monthly listeners to 9.6 million in the last two weeks. Not sure how this has happened, if it's 1 song or multiple songs that have had a bump in play. But I have noticed that The Universal and Charmless Man have re-entered the top 10, replacing Good Song and There's No Other Way.

[thespider]

In other Spotify news Blur has gone from 8ish million unique monthly listeners to 9.6 million in the last two weeks. Not sure how this has happened, if it's 1 song or multiple songs that have had a bump in play. But I have noticed that The Universal and Charmless Man have re-entered the top 10, replacing Good Song and There's No Other Way.

The extra publicity of their reunion shows has helped, doubtless.

[stephen]

In other Spotify news Blur has gone from 8ish million unique monthly listeners to 9.6 million in the last two weeks. Not sure how this has happened, if it's 1 song or multiple songs that have had a bump in play. But I have noticed that The Universal and Charmless Man have re-entered the top 10, replacing Good Song and There's No Other Way.

The extra publicity of their reunion shows has helped, doubtless.

All members apart from Alex James have projects out at the moment too

[idreamofpikas]

In other Spotify news Blur has gone from 8ish million unique monthly listeners to 9.6 million in the last two weeks. Not sure how this has happened, if it's 1 song or multiple songs that have had a bump in play. But I have noticed that The Universal and Charmless Man have re-entered the top 10, replacing Good Song and There's No Other Way.

The extra publicity of their reunion shows has helped, doubtless.

Probably not. Dave's had 22,607 unique monthly users and the Waeve 51,584 while Gorillaz have been popping out singles since last summer(so no reason to have a sudden increase now). Even if none of those listeners were listening to Blur last month, thats still only 70k more.

Either 1 or multiple songs have been added to playlists for a big increase of an extra 1 million listeners.