Damon Albarn is the grand conceptualist of the Britpop era, spearheading its blend of knowingly retro aesthetics and modernist verve with Blur in the mid-'90s. The band hit with 1994's Parklife, then steered in a noisier, artier course. Such shifts in direction became a signature of Albarn's career. Once Blur began to fray at the dawn of the 2000s, he founded Gorillaz, a virtual pop group whose fame soon eclipsed that of Blur. This gave Albarn the opportunity to pivot to other projects, ranging from the atmospheric the Good, the Bad & the Queen and the Flea collaboration Rocket Juice & the Moon to Africa Express and stage musicals. On his sporadic solo records (2014's Everyday Robot and 2021's The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows) he crafted moodier, more introspective music than he did with either Blur or Gorillaz.