In 1998 Albarn and comic book artist and designer Jamie Hewlett reacted by creating the virtual pop group Gorillaz, arguably their response to the cult of celebrity and reality television’s association with manufactured pop music. Not least the hyped media attention on Britpop prevented him from experimenting with other musical styles (Phillips 2001). During the 1990s, the popularity of Britpop had led to the media intruding into musicians’ private lives, especially Albarn’s, who felt that the pressures began to restrict his musical career. One cannot help but surmise that Albarn may be reflecting on his own musical career as lead singer with the Britpop group Blur. I think that is true of so many things in our culture these days no one is given a chance to experiment. They do an amazing thing, but then the whole weight of the celebrity and money destroys it, and they can’t come astray from a single hit…. Albarn also comments on how manufactured artists and bands are not allowed to experiment or control their own music, primarily because the music industry expects them to produce standardized songs to keep the targeted audience satisfied. Damon Albarn reflects, “The centre aspect of it is how uniformed it makes everything, it doesn’t celebrate how the individual pop culture should be, constantly pulsating new ideas, new approaches and new manifestos” (quoted in Pop Britannia 2008).
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It is also evident that an insight into future pop stars’ personal lives is often more appealing to the media and public than the music, making it problematic for professional musicians to be acknowledged simply for their musical output.
The current wave of successful popular music has been based largely on manufactured pop, thus encouraging reality television competitions globally to find the next “pop star” (e.g., Pop Idol and The X-Factor). Over the past decade, celebrity and reality television culture have had a major impact on both media and popular music. Roger Morton, quoted in Gorillaz: Rise of the Ogre (2006)
In a world where everything is a virtual copy of itself, where there’s nothing but image, wherse publicists have publicists and where celebrity is bleakly industrial, it’s inevitable that “image” starts to collapse on itself…. The Fantasy Worlds of the Virtual Group and Their Creators “Feel Good” with Gorillaz and “Reject False Icons”