Why I Still Need the Gorillaz to Be Real

2D, Murdoc, Russel, Noodle—the only band whose members technically don’t exist but feel more present than most acts that do. I’ve followed the Gorillaz since Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett first convinced the world that a virtual cartoon band could carry genuine emotional weight, and the return with Humanz hit differently than I expected. More anxious. More crowded. More like a party that already knows the night has to end.

They came back to play live, including a show at the Palladium in Cologne that Deutsche Telekom streamed in 360 degrees—the first time the band’s live spectacle got that treatment, and genuinely the right format for it. A Gorillaz concert was always more than a band playing songs. It’s a projection, literally and figuratively. Streaming it in every direction at once made a strange kind of sense.

My favorite has always been Noodle. I can’t fully explain it. Maybe because she started as the mystery—the kid guitarist who arrived in a FedEx crate—and grew into the character with the most actual narrative weight. Or maybe I just have a type, and it involves the quiet one who turns out to be the most dangerous person in the room.