“No static at all.”
Pirate radio or a pirate radio station is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license. In some cases radio stations are considered legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are received— especially when the signals cross a national boundary.*
Over a year before Plastic Beach was released, Damon Albarn took over BBC Radio and premiered some demos he was working on for the upcoming Gorillaz album, which didn’t have a name yet. Three songs were played – Electric Shock, Broken, and Stylo. Two of these songs would later appear on Plastic Beach, while parts of Electric Shock were slapped onto Rhinestone Eyes and the rest locked in the vault to rest. Once the album was complete, Murdoc himself made several broadcasts to dole out information on the band, tease new songs, and play some wonderful music he had been enjoying lately.
These ‘Pirate Radio’ broadcasts would continue throughout PB’s release cycle, and even after The Fall came out we got one final broadcast. Aside from the outstanding Converse collaboration in 2012, that broadcast was the end of Gorillaz for a very long time. When they returned with Humanz, people were very surprised by the bold new direction – gone were the tranquil sunny shores of Plastic Beach, gone were the sounds of piano melodies and seagull cries. They were replaced by dirty bathrooms and dark corridors, a dilapidated home filled with vengeful spirits, and the murky melting pot of human cynicism and anger. “What happened?” people wondered. The pleasantries were all gone, and the mixture of live instrumentation with the synthetic was dropped for an almost entirely electronic orchestration (the only live instruments on Humanz are distorted electronic guitar on Submission and Charger). Well, the reason for that was told to us seven years beforehand. Plastic Beach told us exactly what Humanz was going to be, and it told us via broadcast.
Broadcasts are very important in the world of Plastic Beach. Damon premiered those demos on BBC, and aside from Pirate Radio there were also several other radio takeovers staged by Murdoc to ‘get the word out.’ I believe Plastic Beach is a concept album, one where Damon leverages the idea of the cartoon band to create a radio show called Plastic Beach. Gorillaz hijacks radios and use their Pirate Radio station to broadcast this show to the world. Every song on the album is a different show, a different little slice of a tasty Gorillaz pie meant to get people around the world interested and aware of the dangers of climate change.
The introduction to the broadcast
The first lyric on the album references Planet Of The Apes, a post apocalyptic film, and the album’s first verse – delivered by Snoop Dogg, a world renowned hip hop artist who would surely get the attention of the masses – really hammers home the point about the broadcast.
♪ from “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach”
It’s a call to arms, a message for the youth listening to the broadcast. The world is Fucked with a capital f, so we’re broadcasting this station to let everybody know what’s happening out there and what we can do to save it. White Flag continues the broadcast reference, referencing various television shows themed around being lost at sea.
♪ from “White Flag”
They’re painting a picture of this place, this Plastic Beach, and the peace of mind found when separated from the horrors of the world. As unnatural as a beach made of plastic may be, it’s still, in its own ironic way, untouched by human hands. A natural formation of unnatural things – and that’s okay. But it also serves as a warning.
♪ from “White Flag”
For all they talked up the island to be in the opening verses, it’s still garbage, and it will still get them sick. And even if it were a paradise, they acknowledge that the coming of man would ruin it. White Flag serves as a lesson and warning in kind: Yes, we’ve already crossed a threshold with pollution, but we haven’t yet crossed the threshold. But we’re getting closer and closer every day.
Damon continues to acknowledge this on Rhinestone Eyes, where he mentions being a
♪ from “Rhinestone Eyes”
I’ve seen this line get laughed off as an ‘oh Damon!’-ism, just a cheeky moment of Damon getting a little absurd with his concept: But, I think this line is a pretty explicit statement of intent from Damon. The tower means a couple things. It’s a broadcast tower, and also the white ivory tower we see on Plastic Beach itself. Him being a scary gargoyle means that he’s… well, SPOOKY. He’s using his tower to broadcast a frightening message about the perilous state of the environment. “You made with plastic power” is another double-meaning: the tower on plastic beach is literally made of plastic, and the environmental issues central to the broadcast’s theme were created by every human being who has ever wasted or littered or made a mess. Now, let’s take a look at Mos Def’s verse at the start and end of Stylo.
♪ from “Stylo”
Pretty obvious stuff, right? It’s the start of a broadcast! The song goes on about electricity’s ability to both create love, spread positive messages and influence change in the world. Mos’ verse bookends the track, suggesting that the broadcast has been a success. The Gorillaz and their Pirate Radio are on the air. Then, we hit Superfast Jellyfish…. Of course! The introduction is an ad-break, and after hearing the ad before their show, De La Soul goes off about consumerism and waste causing pollution and the decay of nature.
The broadcast’s message: It’s a Casio on a Plastic Beach
I could do a truly in depth analysis about every song, but we’d be here all day. Empire Ants refers to the broadcast as a “polyphonic prayer” (or a polyphonic prairie, depending on who you ask. Personally I think it’s the latter – a world of music and beautiful sound and messaging). Glitter Freeze is…. Let’s come back to that one later, actually. Just remember that in the story Jamie came up with for Plastic Beach, the Glitter Freeze was a pirate ship, and Mark E. Smith was its captain. Some Kind Of Nature is a fairly apparent sing/song tune about how man has created its own warped and deformed nature. On Melancholy Hill doesn’t really have much, honestly. It’s a cheesy love song thrown on the album for pop appeal – but that doesn’t mean it’s without a message; a message about enjoying nature while it’s still there. The song mentioned that looking upon the melancholy hill is akin to looking out on “another dream”. Nature is beautiful and fantastical, but just like our dreams, it’ll be over in the blink of an eye.
Broken is very interesting, however. Perhaps one of the best written songs on the record, conceptually. It’s a love song, like On Melancholy Hill before it, but instead of being a love song involving nature it’s a love song about nature, about being in love with nature. But that love is breaking.
♪ from “Broken”
The man only sees nature in his mind, and even then it’s a distant and far off dying star. A metaphor for falling out of love with the world around us. “They connect with the fall of man” is pretty clear. Dying stars is connected to the end of mankind. When the Sun, our star, dies, so do we.
♪ from “Broken”
This line is a question, and the question it asks is a fun one. Is the love between this man and nature far off in the distance, a pirate ship sailing the empty, polluted seas? Or is it with them every time they look at each other, like On Melancholy Hill implies? The next line gives us the answer:
♪ from “Broken”
The fading and broken love is confirmed with this line – he doesn’t use natural light, nor does he sleep in natural darkness. He turns on his television and lets that synthetic light sleep with him.
After Mos Def runs a raffle on the broadcast (assuredly awarding tickets to a Tesla show at the Allstate Arena), we get the title track. The chorus of this one is really fun in a way that a lot of people don’t seem to necessarily get – take a look at the first two lines of the chorus.
♪ from “Plastic Beach”
These two lines mean the exact same thing! The environment is a total fake, even the sounds of the instruments that wash up on this beach are fraudulent. “Automatic computer speech” refers to the sounds generated by all this garbage – there’s no human input anymore, but the synthetic noise pollution continues unabated.
Cloud of Unknowing finally ties it all together with the broadcast theme. As Bobby Womack says, every satellite is tuned in, and receiving their broadcast. We’re waiting to see what the morning brings, and if the world listens, it could in fact bring sunshine on its wings. If Gorillaz accomplishes their mission, the world will have a bright future, and nature and mankind could co-exist.
The titular Pirate Jet is a reference to the broadcast itself – Pirate Radios are fairly outdated, aren’t they? You can’t hijack a broadcast in 2010 with a crappy wooden ship like the Glitter Freeze. You need something sleek and modern. A jet. With a cool skull logo on it or something. Anyway, Pirate Jet is a foreshadowing of failure, a warning of a possible future if the world doesn’t listen – the world will end, and people will simply party it up and drink and eventually everything will fade away and technology will consume all that’s left of the natural state of things. “Fuck it all,” this song says. “Just drink until there’s nothing left of the world. It’s too late to change.” Sounds familiar?
The sky is falling
Plastic Beach, the album, was released on March 3, 2010. Right now, many Gorillaz fans consider it to be one of their triumphs, with a good amount of people considering it their best album. But, it took a long time for people to come and feel that way. Plastic Beach was a failure when it released – it missed its sales targets, the videos and singles underperformed, the world tour was a disaster, the sequel albums were cancelled, and the stress of it all caused Damon and Jamie to split from each other and the project for over half a decade. But then Humanz happened.
Humanz picks up right where Plastic Beach left off, except the future we were warned about in Pirate Jet has actually came to pass. Nobody listened, and now the world is ending. Nature has been killed completely (as evidenced by the entirely synthetic sounds of the record as foreshadowed in Plastic Beach’s title track), and all that’s left to do is drink into the drink, and party until we fade away in this horrible apocalyptic nightmare that we’ve created for ourselves. Because of Plastic Beach’s failure to be recognized, because the lesson that broadcast meant to teach was unlearned, we are all doomed. Humanz is a direct sequel to Plastic Beach in its concept, and I think that sort of cohesion and artistry is a beautiful thing.
If Plastic Beach is an album about the few crying out to the many in an effort to save them, Humanz is an album about the many crying out to the few in an effort to be saved. There are hints throughout the album that several of earth’s people – perhaps even 2D himself – have escaped the apocalyptic earth on a spaceship, and the people left behind are dealing with their situation in all manner of ways. Vince Staples and De La Soul choose to party, get wild, fuck, and ignore their problems. Anthony Hamilton chooses to spread the message of the problem to those unwilling to hear it. Pusha T chooses to confide in Mavis Staples in an attempt to feel some togetherness in these final moments. Benjamin Clementine is the problem, bringing hatred and fear onto an already fragile world. On Busted and Blue, our dear blue haired friend sings about the trauma of leaving a loved one behind on earth as he’s jettisoned out onto the stars. He tried to warn them, he really did. But sometimes our efforts are fruitless, even if all we’re trying to do is help people and make positive change. The forces of evil, after all, far outweigh the collective forces for good in our society. Plastic Beach was a prescient record both in its messaging and in its sound and scope. It warned us of a digital future where nature is dying and the people left behind are begging for mercy, to no avail. Perhaps Humanz – an album about the ultimate victory of evil over good, and of our world no longer finding us suitable for it – is a tale of the near future as well. It certainly will be, if we refuse to listen.
*Excerpt taken from Wikipedia®’s page “Pirate Radio”. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and additional terms that may apply.