Gorillaz Duo Use "Monkey" to Promote BBC Olympics Coverage

Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn — the duo behind Gorillaz — have created an animated clip promoting the BBC's coverage of the Beijing Summer Olympics. The video draws heavily from the duo's most recent collaboration, the opera Monkey: Journey to the West, based on a classic Chinese novel. The video itself doesn't seem very Olympic-y until the Monkey character uses a spear to both pole vault and javelin. Visually, these guys are a lot easier to look at than the Gorillaz's Murdoc, and the music of the opera sounds like Steve Reich composing over an android orchestra. Plus, it's much better than those Morgan Freeman-narrated Visa commercials we're getting over here to promote the Olympics. Take a look at the full video here.

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Song Stories

“Push It”

Salt-N-Pepa | 1987

Originating as a B side to their cover of the Stax classic “Tramp,” Cheryl “Salt” James, Sandi “Pepa” Denton and Dee Dee “DJ Spinderella” Roper came up with the goods on this career-making, Grammy-nominated platinum single about working it on the dancefloor. “Push It” has been sampled and spliced to death since it debuted in 1987, yet the original track is as fresh and fly as when SNP — among the few original women of hip-hop — debuted it. “Most men will never believe ‘Push It’ was never about sex,” said James. “And that’s why the record went to Number One,” said Denton. “Everybody thought it was about sex.”

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