62 Facts About Damon Albarn

Damon Albarn is an English-Icelandic musician, singer-songwriter and composer.

Damon Albarn is the frontman of the rock band Blur and the co-creator and primary musical contributor of the virtual band Gorillaz.

Damon Albarn formed the virtual band Gorillaz in 1998 with the comic book artist Jamie Hewlett.

Damon Albarn co-founded the non-profit musical organisation Africa Express and has composed film soundtracks.

Damon Albarn scored the stage productions Monkey: Journey to the West, Dr Dee and Wonder.

In 2016, Damon Albarn received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.

Damon Albarn was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to music.

Damon Albarn was born on 23 March 1968; he is the elder child of artist Keith Damon Albarn and his wife Hazel, nee Dring.

Damon Albarn was head of the Colchester School of Art at Colchester Institute.

In 2002 Edward Albarn died; Damon stated in an interview that Edward did not want to live any longer and decided to go on a hunger strike.

In 1968, at the age of six months, Damon Albarn was a "testing expert" for designs for educational aids and toys for children including fibreglass furniture and play-structures fancifully called "The Kissmequiosk".

When Damon Albarn was nine years old, his family took a holiday trip to Turkey for three months before settling in Aldham Fordstreet, Essex, an area described by Damon Albarn as "one of those burgeoning Thatcher experiments where they were building loads of small estates".

Damon Albarn was interested in music from an early age, attending an Osmonds concert at the age of six.

Damon Albarn started playing guitar, piano and violin in his youth and was interested in composing music, one of his compositions winning a heat in the nationwide Young Composer of the Year competition.

Damon Albarn has credited the Specials and Fun Boy Three as some of his earliest influences, and John Lennon in him taking up songwriting.

Damon Albarn studied acting at the East 15 Acting School in Debden, but left after the first year.

Damon Albarn enrolled on a part-time music course at London's Goldsmiths College in 1988, claiming that his sole intention was to gain access to the student union bar.

Damon Albarn was in a group named Circus alongside Coxon and drummer Dave Rowntree.

The recording of the group's debut album was hindered by Damon Albarn having to write his lyrics in the studio.

Damon Albarn was uncomfortable with fame and he suffered from panic attacks.

The debate over which band would top the British singles chart became a media phenomenon, and Damon Albarn appeared on News at Ten.

Damon Albarn grew to appreciate Coxon's tastes in lo-fi and underground music, and recognised the need to change Blur's musical direction .

Damon Albarn said, "I just can't do it anymore", and explained that the main motivation for participating in the reunion was to repair his relationship with Coxon, which succeeded.

Hewlett initially thought Damon Albarn was "arsey, a wanker", and despite becoming one of the band's acquaintances, Hewlett often did not get on with its members, especially after he started going out with Coxon's ex-girlfriend, Jane Olliver.

Hewlett had recently broken up with Olliver and Damon Albarn was at the end of his highly publicised relationship with Frischmann.

The band's music is a collaboration between various musicians, Damon Albarn being the only permanent musical contributor, and incorporates influences including alternative rock, Britpop, dub, hip-hop, and pop music.

Damon Albarn released Mali Music in 2002, recorded in Mali, during a trip he made to support Oxfam in 2000.

Damon Albarn has visited Nigeria to record music with Nigerian drummer Tony Allen.

In 2003, Damon Albarn released an EP, Democrazy, a compilation of demos he recorded in various hotel rooms during the United States portion of Think Tanks tour.

In 2014, Damon Albarn appeared in the song "Go Back" in Tony Allen's albums Film of Life and The Source.

Damon Albarn said he would be taking his album on tour, and that he would play songs from all of his other bands, including Blur and Gorillaz.

Damon Albarn worked with Syrian rapper and friend Eslam Jawaad on the song "Mr Whippy", though the song does not appear on the album it is a B-side on the Herculean single.

Damon Albarn has stated that he is not responsible for the name; someone in Lagos did the sleeve design and that was the name it was given.

Damon Albarn has claimed that he is content with the outcome, as trying to come up with band names is difficult for him.

In 2003, Hall and Mushtaq released The Hour of Two Lights, in which Damon Albarn co-wrote and sang on the track "Ten Eleven".

In 2003, Damon Albarn worked with the garage rock band the Strokes on their album Room on Fire.

Producer Gordon Raphael claims that Damon Albarn was experimenting with backing vocals on the record.

Damon Albarn has contributed backing vocals to the songs "FM" on Nathan Haines' Squire for Hire and "Small Time Shot Away" on Massive Attack's 100th Window, which were released in 2003 for both tracks, credit was given to Gorillaz frontman 2-D instead.

Damon Albarn produced soul singer Bobby Womack's twenty-seventh studio album The Bravest Man in the Universe, released in 2012.

Damon Albarn recently performed on Jools Holland's Hootenanny on New Year's Eve, performing the track "Love is Gonna Lift You Up".

In 2016, Damon Albarn appeared on De La Soul's studio album And the Anonymous Nobody.

Damon Albarn composed the score with collaboration by Michael Nyman for the 1999 movie Ravenous, and was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Music for his work.

In collaboration with theatre director Rufus Norris, Damon Albarn has created an opera for the 2011 Manchester International Festival based on the life of Elizabethan scientist John Dee and titled Doctor Dee.

Damon Albarn recorded the film score for the film version of the book The Boy in the Oak, which was written by his sister, Jessica Damon Albarn.

In 2014, Damon Albarn contributed the song "Sister Rust" to the soundtrack of science fiction film Lucy.

Damon Albarn wrote the music for a musical based on Alice in Wonderland called Wonder.

Damon Albarn provided a track for the film The White Helmets called "Crashing Down", an abandoned track initially planned for the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach.

Damon Albarn starred in Antonia Bird's 1997 film Face alongside Ray Winstone and Robert Carlyle.

Damon Albarn was featured in Gunar Karlsson's 2007 film, Anna and the Moods, along with Terry Jones and Bjork.

Damon Albarn played "Bull" in Joe Orton's Up Against It, a Radio 4 play originally written for the Beatles broadcast in 1998.

Damon Albarn described becoming a father as "witnessing a life force" and saying:.

In 2006, Damon Albarn was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from the University of East London, saying it was "great to receive [the] award from an institution where my dad used to work and which I, as a child, used to think of as that big building with lots of interesting people in".

In 2015, Damon Albarn was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the Queen's New Year Honours list of December 31, which recognises British citizens for their achievements in public life and service to the United Kingdom.

Damon Albarn visited the country in the mid-90s for recording, as well as on holiday, and subsequently bought a house in Reykjavik.

Damon Albarn has been an active supporter of various charities and philanthropic efforts throughout his career as a musician and has been involved in various charity albums and singles.

DRC Music, a collective formed by Damon Albarn, released their debut album Kinshasa One Two as a charity album in which all of the money earned is given to Oxfam.

Damon Albarn has formed a collective with Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner, and Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos to make a charity single with the money earned from that single donated to Oxfam.

Damon Albarn has been a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights, cancelling concerts in Israel following the Gaza flotilla raid in 2010 and played a concert at the Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East Gala Dinner in 2014.

Damon Albarn is anti-war, holding views shared by others in his family, including his grandfather Edward Damon Albarn, who died during a hunger strike in 2002.

Damon Albarn teamed up with Robert "3D" Del Naja of Massive Attack and worked with Stop the War Coalition, CND and the Muslim Association of Britain to organise campaigns to raise awareness of the potential dangers of the UK's involvement in the war.

Damon Albarn was due to speak in Hyde Park on the rally in February 2003 when a million people took to the streets of London in protest at the imminent war.

Damon Albarn later revealed that he had "this image of my grandad in his slippers reading the paper, knowing that his grandson had been involved in something which he'd put so much of his life into" and "got over-emotional".