Gorillaz are the latest band to headline the Fortnite Festival, at least according to numerous leaks and rumours currently seeping onto the wires, wth an official announcement apparently imminent. But some, perhaps younger, players of the game clearly don’t have a clue who they are.
So... for all you non-gaming grandads out there – Fortnite is a popular online video game in which players can team up together to fight off mutual enemies, or fight to be the last player standing.
First launched in 2023, Fortnite Festival is a spin-off game in which players ‘play’ along to the game’s library of songs. In the past couple of years a number of top line artists have teamed up and ‘headlined’ the game, including Sabrina Carpenter, The Weeknd and Lady Gaga.
Bruno Mars is currently headlining the ninth season of the game, but when it became apparent that Gorillaz would be replacing him from August 26, some Fortnite Festival players were clearly bemused.
“Ok can someone fill me in pls. Cause I actually don’t know who this is?” one fan posted on Instagram. “Same” replied another.
That said, some others were more positive. “For the people who don’t know who they are, they are a late ‘90s band who have hella good songs. They also look sick so yeah, I’m excited,” wrote one fan on Twitter/ X.
Hmmmm. Think you’ll find the band’s first release was actually in 2000, in the shape of the EP Tomorrow Comes Today. Just saying…
Anyway, Damon Albarn’s cartoon crew are in many ways the perfect fit for a video game, given that they are already animations. In all likelihood 2-D, Russel, Murdoc and Noodle will go down better than the last time Albarn was faced with a visibly younger audience.
That was when Blur headlined Coachella last year. The band’s greatest hits set clearly didn’t mean much to an audience largely comprised of young, wealthy Californians, much to the singer’s chagrin.
At one stage, trying to elicit a singalong during Girls And Boys, the singer snarled: “You’re never seeing us again, so you might as well fucking sing it. Know what I’m saying,”
