The caricature-like proportions of each Gorillaz member’s physical features, gaits and gestures neatly placed them in the boxes set out for “traditional” manufactured pop groups: the cute one, the serious one, the pin-up, the bad boy. The band could easily be the younger cousins of the riot grrl-esque eponymous star of his 90s strip Tank Girl, and the artist brings the same energetic artwork to Gorillaz, forming an aesthetic that married rebellion with cuteness. Hewlett’s initial character designs place them firmly in the counterculture comics tradition: the linework is pronounced, postures exaggerated, colours flat. Thematically, it’s little surprise that Blur frontman and Gorillaz co-creator Damon Albarn has since described On Your Own as “one of the first ever Gorillaz tunes.” It was released in 1997, a year before Albarn and comics artist Jamie Hewlett formed their “virtual” band, whose fictional lives have come to be unquestioningly accepted as just as “real” as any other pop confection. On Your Own delineates a particular brand of late 90s ennui directed at falsities: it lampoons bus-riding, camcorder-wielding tourists and a culture where emotions are “bought mail-order.” Spirituality is transactional, and reality is cheap simulacra.
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