“Strange Timez” by Gorillaz featuring Robert Smith

"Strange Timez" brought the Cure's Robert Smith into Gorillaz's Song Machine, the web series that spent 2020 dropping tracks with a different guest each time. It landed on 9 September 2020 as the sixth episode and lent its title to the seventh album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, on Parlophone. It was the first of the Song Machine singles made during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Damon Albarn said he and Smith put it together over email.

Smith is no mere guest voice here: he's credited on guitar, keyboards and bass, sings alongside Albarn, and shares the writing with Albarn and Remi Kabaka Jr., who adds percussion. Etta Albarn Teulon plays trumpet. The video sends the band to the Moon, where Murdoc finds a monolith that zaps him back to Earth, right outside Kong Studios.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.