DAMON ALBARN

Creative Personality Assignment

VIVEK KR SINGH
Reg No. - 0458/55
 Early life
Born on 23 March 1968 Damon Albarn is an English musician, singer, songwriter,
composer and record producer, co-founder of the virtual band Gorillaz and best known as the
lead singer of the rock band Blur. He is the elder child of artist Keith Albarn and his wife Hazel,
Dring. Originally from Lincolnshire, Hazel Albarn was a theatrical set designer for the theater
business of the Royal Stratford East Theater in London. He also headed The School of Art and
Design at Colchester Institute.
When Damon was growing up, his family shifted to East London, Leytonstone. He was
raised as a ' liberal, and his household described as ' bohemian,' he was also raised in the
Quaker religion. Albarn agrees with the views of his parents and claims later, "I always thought
that my parents were dead right and strangely went against the grain – by following them all
the time." His parents primarily used to listen to blues, Indian ragas, and African music.
From an early age, Albarn was interested in music, attending an Osmonds concert at
the age of six. He began playing guitar, piano, and violin in his youth and was interested in
composing music, winning nationwide Young Composer of the Year contest for one of his
compositions.
After he failed eleven-plus exams, he started attending Stanway Comprehensive
School. It was at Stanway where he met future Blur guitarist Graham Coxon. However, after
developing an interest in drama, he studied acting at Debden's East 15 Acting School and also
began to perform in several school productions. After leaving the drama school within a year,
He entered into a production and management contract with owners of the Beat Factory
recording studio - Marijke Bergkamp and Graeme Holdaway, where Blur members, then
known as Seymour, made their first recordings.

Music Career
In 1988, Albarn registered at London's Goldsmiths College for a part-time music
course, claiming that his sole purpose was to obtain access to the student union bar. Albarn
was with Coxon and drummer Dave Rowntree in a band called Circus. Alex James, a fellow
student at Goldsmiths, ultimately entered as the bassist of the band. In December 1988, they
changed their name to Seymour, inspired by J.D. Salinger's Seymour: An Introduction. In
March 1990, they signed to Food Records after changing their name to Blur. Blur published
their first single, "She's So High," in October 1990, which in the UK Singles Chart reached
number 48. The group had difficulty producing a follow-up single; however, The resulting
single, "There's No Other Way," became a hit, peaking at number eight. Blur became pop stars
as a consequence of the achievement of the single and was adopted into a clique of bands
that frequented the London Syndrome club dubbed the "Scene That Celebrates Itself." Albarn
had to write his lyrics in the studio which hampered the recording of the group's debut album,
Leisure (1991). Even though the album peaked at number seven on the UK Albums Chart, it
got mixed reviews and, according to reporter John Harris, "could not shake off the odor of
anti-climax." Damon Albarn has since referred to Leisure as "awful".

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 After they found out they had a debt of £ 60,000, Blur toured the US in 1992 to try to
recover their losses. Albarn and the band became increasingly unhappy and homesick on their
two months tour and began to write songs "creating an English environment." Unlike
American grunge bands such as Nirvana, Blur had undergone an ideological and image shift
aimed at honoring their English heritage. Although skeptical about Albarn's new
manifestation, Balfe gave his assent to the band's choice of Andy Partridge from the XTC band
to produce their follow-up to Leisure. Partridge's sessions turned out to be unsatisfactory, but
a chance reunion with Stephen Street led him back to produce the group.
Released in May 1993 their second Blur album, “Modern Life Is Rubbish,” reached 15th
in the British chart but could not break the 200th US Billboard and sold only 19,000 copies.
Although the album performed poorly, Albarn was happy with the band's direction and
prolifically wrote for the next Blur album. Released in 1994, Parklife, which is enthusiastically
welcomed by the media, is considered one of Britpop's defining records revived Blur's
commercial fortunes, entered number one in the British charts and remained 90 weeks in the
charts. Blur received four awards, including Best Band and Best Album for Parklife at the 1995
Brit Awards. However, Albarn felt uneasy with fame and suffered panic attacks.
Released in September 1995, The Great Escape entered the UK charts at number one
with positive reviews. However, opinion changed rapidly; Blur was mainly out of favor with
the media. In contrast to the "working class heroes" oasis, the Blur was viewed as an
"inauthentic middle-class pop group," which Albarn says makes him feel "dumb and
embarrassed."
An early 1996 Q interview recorded straining relationships among Blur members;
journalist Adrian Deevoy wrote that he discovered them "on the brink of a nervous
breakdown." In the refusal of the Britpop esthetic of the group, Coxon began to resent his
comrades and wanted them to listen to bright new American rock bands like Pavement.
Albarn appreciated his tastes of lo-fi and subterranean music and acknowledged the necessity
of changing the musical direction of Blur again. "I can to sit at my piano all day long and write
brilliant beobach pop songs, but you have to keep going," he said and decided to give more
creative control of the new album to Coxon. During this period Albarn visited Iceland: "I had
the recurring childish dream of a black sand beach, and one shabby, pamperous day [ laughs
], while watching TV I saw a program on Iceland, and it had black beaches, so I got on a flight
...... I did not know anybody. I went to the street, to Laugavegur, where the bars are ... and
that was it.
The group left to record the remainder of the album in Iceland, far from the Britpop
scene, after initial sessions in London. This resulted in the fifth album of the band Blur, which
was released in February 1997. While the media expected that Blur's adolescent fanbase
could be alienated from the lo-fi experiment, they applauded the attempt generally. Taking
note of lyrics such as "Look within America / She is all right" and noting Albarn's "obligational
nod to Beck," the reviewer felt that the band had come to accept American values during this
time – a change of attitude from the Britpop years. The album and it's first single, Beetlebum,
reached number one in the UK in spite of the cries of "corporate suicide." While the album
was not able to match the revenues of its past British albums, Blur became the most popular

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band worldwide, especially in the United States, thanks to the successful single "Song 2." The
band embarked on World Tour of 9-month, following the success of Blur.
Blur's drifted further away from Britpop with the release of their sixth studio album
13. Lyrics from Albarn — more caring, personal and intimate than in previous occasions —
reflected his breakup with his eight-year-old partner, Justine Frischmann. In November of
2001, recording started for Blur's next album in London. Coxon left the group soon after the
sessions began. Released in May 2003, “ThinkTank” was full of electronic sounds of
atmosphere, grim, with simpler guitar lines from Albarn and relied mainly on other
instruments to compensate for Coxon absence. The lack of the guitarist also implied that
Think Tank was written mostly by Albarn. Its sound testified to Albarn's growing interested
and influence over the path of the band in African and Middle East Music.
In the early 1990s, Albarn and comic book artist Jamie Hewlett created the concept
for Gorillaz, a "virtual band" for which animated characters drawn by Hewlett would serve as
the primary visual element (for example, on record covers and in music videos) of Albarn's
music. The idea of building Gorillaz came about when both watched MTV: "There is nothing
substantial when you watch MTV for too long, so we have this idea for a cartoon band,
something that would have been a comment on it," Hewlett said. Music is the collaboration
of several musicians, while Albarn is the only permanent contributor, and includes elements,
such as Alternative Rock, Britpop, dub, Hip-hop, and Pop songs.
The band's full-length self-titled album (2001) represented its varied members in a
colorful combination of worldwide pop styles, including hip-hop and reggae, suited to its
playful avatars. Gorillaz's digital sounds filtered into Blur's next record, Think Tank (2003), but
Gorillaz's Demon Days (2005) album's significant global revenues showed that Albarn's
newest band had become the more-popular act. Gorillaz later released Plastic Beach (2010),
which supported an environmental awareness message. Blur started performing in 2009 after
a six-year gap, and its eighth studio album, The Magic Whip, was released in 2015, politically
themed, Humanz, was released two years later by Gorillaz. In addition, Everyday Robots
(2014) was registered by Albarn under his name.

Acting career
Albarn performed with Ray Winstone and Robert Carlyle in Antonia Bird's 1997 movie
Face. Albarn, along with Terry Jones and Björk was also featured in Karlsson's 2007 movie
Anna and Moods. Broadcast in 1998, Joe Orton's Up Against It, a Radio 4 play about the
Beatles, Albarn performed "Bull."

Why I Think he is Creative

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play Vocals, piano, keyboards, guitar, bass guitar, synthesizer, melodica, drums, percussion,
and ukulele. Discipline and focus are, nevertheless, the real key to his success.
Albarn could have deftly become only the singer from Blur, but he has been restlessly
creative in his admirably lengthy career. In brief, he's done eight albums with Blur, Based on
a Chinese myth he has also composed an opera, Monkey: Journey to the West, and convened
another group, the Good, the Bad and the Queen, two supergroup releases (one with Flea
and Afrobeat legend Tony, another featuring Allen featuring members from the Clash and the
Verve), all of which have achieved commercial success and critical acclaim. Gorillaz, however,
is his greatest triumph. Fronted by him yet led by a cast of featured artists, they are the
product of adventure, growing into something beyond music and, for a band called Gorillaz,
into something weirdly human that bear his imprint.
He is open to new ideas and is a divergent thinker. Albarn has also drawn attention to African
performers, through his Mali Music album and the Africa Express live project. He sometimes
did fall short of his targets, but it does not stop him from striving to achieve yet more. Only a
few musicians have stayed interesting for as long as Damon Albarn. With Gorillaz, he achieved
the impossible of mixing hip-hop and rock in a way that didn’t suck. He even recorded one of
his video album on an iPad. Albarn's cocky, cockney persona sometimes encourages
underestimation of his achievements, but he is our most unremittingly inventive pop figure,
and we should be glad to have him.

References
1. Damon Albarn biography | Latest news, concerts, and lyrics. Retrieved from
https://www.rockol.com/uk/artist/Damon-Albarn/biography.
2. Damon Albarn on the Future of Blur, His Solo Debut and More. Retrieved from
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/qa-damon-albarn-on-the-future-of-
blur-his-first-ever-solo-album-and-why-he-doesnt-hate-oasis-anymore-248120/
3. The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 7 Apr. 2012, Albarn: Gorillaz, Heroin and the
Last Days of Blur.” www.theguardian.com/music/2012/apr/07/damon-albarn-gorillaz-
heroin-blur.
4. Damon Albarn. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://thereaderwiki.com/en/Damon_Albarn

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