The music channel that's constantly on in my gym is, for my sins, 'MTV Hits', whose programme directors seem to have a direct link into my brain in order for them the choose those videos that are least appealing to me, personally.
"Okay, so we've played the vacuous carbon-copy girl band, who's next?"
"It seems he really hates soulless cloned boy bands, let's roll one of them up."
"Great, can we play some slow jams later?"
"Yeah! Chuck me that Lemar disc."
Somehow, a beautiful cooling oasis amidst an ocean of festering garbage, the new Gorillaz single, 'Feel Good Inc', has somehow got onto high rotate, and when it plays, my heart soars and I have a temporary, glorious respite from the waves of pure shite they play at every other moment. My RPMs go from 80 to 96 without even thinking about it.
I have a feeling this could be an early contender be the 'song of the summer'- which is not to say it will be the best song, just the one I come to associate most with summer `05 ('Clint Eastwood' being the winner for summer `01, appropriately)- I can just as easily imagine chilling out to this song on the Heath as I can leaping up and down to it on the dancefloor.
The bassline kicks ass (and is also kind of sinister, which is great), the beat is the best non-remixed beat Gorillaz have put out to date, and the lyrics are sad but uplifting at the same time. It's excellent. However Gorillaz are one of those bands where the video is just as important as the music, and they don't let down on that score. The video is a fantastic combination of CGI, traditional cel-animation and filmed-model-footage, which creates an effect I haven't really seen before, and it looks fucking great.
I highly recommend you download it and check it out in high res, as it's very detailed.
This is a 