Cracker Island Ft. Thundercat Clint Eastwood Gorillaz

Cracker Island Ft. Thundercat Album: Cracker Island (2022)
Clint Eastwood Album: Gorillaz (2001)
by Gorillaz
that's a 21 year span... impressive IMHO.

Here, Gorillaz lead singer 2-D (aka Damon Albarn) recounts a cult that started on Cracker Island. The creators of the cult entice followers with promises of a perfect paradise, but it's nothing of the sort. After 2-D and others get lured in, they pay with their souls, only to find the promised utopian world doesn't exist.

Said Albarn to BBC Radio's Jack Saunders, "I think the Cracker Island is a sort of the idea that people have kind of some mad ideas can all kind of live together happily in their own kind of echo chamber Cracker Island."

Thundercat joins Gorillaz on the high-energy track, adding his trademark bass guitar and answer vocals.

Albarn and Thundercat wrote "Cracker Island" with Greg Kurstin. "It started like most things do just on GarageBand," Albarn told Jack Saunders. "I went to LA and work with Greg Kurstin, and then Thundercat came for that amazing baseline on. I wanted someone to say in this falsetto answer phrase all the way through. I always had the idea and he came up."
American songwriter/producer Greg Kurstin has an impressive resumé that includes hits for Kelly Clarkson ("What Doesn't Kill You (Stronger)"), Sia ("Cheap Thrills"), and Adele ("Hello," "Easy On Me"). This is first collaboration with Gorillaz, or for that matter on any of Damon Albarn's projects.

Albarn and Kurstin co-produced "Cracker Island" with the animated outfit's Nigerian drummer, Remi Kabaka Jr. He first became friends with Albarn when he used to live with the singer's partner, Suzi.

Gorillaz premiered "Cracker Island" when they kicked off their 2022 World Tour at Antel Arena, Montevideo, Uruguay on April 28, 2022.
Cracker Island is a fictitious island not to be confused with Crocker Island on New York's Susquehanna River, or Croker Island off Australia's Northern Territory coast.

Greg Kurstin had just been working with Thundercat and they'd become friends. The producer texted him and asked to help with this song, which he agreed to do. "It was very fun to watch him work on it and to hear him write his melody parts," Kurstin told Apple Music. "He sang a lot of what Damon sang and then added his own thing and the harmonies. It's always fun to witness him play, because he's absolutely amazing on the bass."

"Cracker" is American vernacular for a crazy white person. "It's derogatory slang," Albarn explained during a Q+A session with comedian Alan Carr for Banquet Records (via NME). "Cracker Island is a place where all the Anglo-Saxon traits that maybe I wouldn't want to embody myself, they all hang out. Cracker Island is a place where ideas like QAnon exist. They'd only listen to Fox News on Cracker Island."

Visual artist Jamie Hewlett added that Cracker Island was inspired by Los Angeles. "We had the idea for the band to become a cult, because after Trump, it felt like a lot of cults were popping up," he said. "People are desperate for misinformation because they're scared of the truth."

Cracker Island was Gorillaz's second UK #1 album and their first since they reached the summit with Demon Days in 2005.

Clint Eastwood is named after the famous Western movie actor. The theme from Eastwood's movie The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly can be heard periodically throughout the song. Eastwood is most famously known for his portrayal of a western character with no name in Sergio Leone Italian westerns of the late '60s. He played Dirty Harry Callahan in the movies Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool, and was the Mayor of Carmel, California in the '80s. Eastwood is also a huge fan and supporter of jazz, and is a somewhat accomplished self-taught jazz pianist.

The reason the song is called Clint Eastwood is because of the strange harmonica-like instrument used in the background, which is called a melodica. It is a keyboard instrument that is played by blowing through a tube and pressing its keys. Damon Albarn of Gorillaz plays it throughout the track, and he thought it sounded a lot like the score to the Clint Eastwood's movie A Fistful of Dollars.

Also, Clint Eastwood is the name of a Jamaican reggae artist who the band heard about when they were recording the album in Jamaica. Albarn explained during a Reddit AMA: "We were recording in Jamaica and listening to a lot of dancehall music and we imagined a cool moniker to have would be Clint Eastwood. Also I'm a great fan of the actor and of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone."
The "Laika Come Home" remix of this song is called "A Fistful of Peanuts."

The basic rhythm track was based on a preset on an Omnichord, which is a small instrument with a keyboard and slider played on the lap. A band called The High Fidelity used the same preset on their track "Pig Might Fly" in 2001.

Albarn recalled to Vulture in a 2020 interview: "It came from switching on the Suzuki Omnichord and the first preset was the beat. That can only happen once: [you take an] electronic instrument and the first thing you play you use, and it becomes a massive hit.

As a result of that, in the proceeding 20 years I've bought a lot of electronic instruments hoping that that eventually would happen again. I mean, maybe we just peaked early!"

The music video introduced most of the world to the four animated band members of Gorillaz (2-D, Murdoc, Noodle, Russel). The real mastermind behind the music is Blur frontman Damon Albarn. The characters were created by comic illustrator Jamie Hewlett.
Albarn sang the chorus. Del Tha Funkee Homosapien rapped the verses.

The line, " I got sunshine in a bag" is probably a reference to marijuana, or at least to contraband of some sort. The line comes from the movie The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly when Eastwood refers to a saddlebag full of gold as sunshine in a bag.
Seven million global sales of the Gorillaz album earned the group an entry in The Guinness Book of Records as the world's most successful virtual band.

This garnered the band three MTV Video Music Award nominations, so Gorillaz created an animated acceptance speech to continue the theme of cartoon band members. Unfortunately, they spent tens of thousands of dollars on a speech they never used, because they lost in all three categories.