Pac-Man (Gorillaz song)

"Pac-Man" (stylised as "PAC-MAN") is a song by British virtual band Gorillaz featuring American rapper Schoolboy Q. The track was released on 20 July 2020 as the sixth single for Gorillaz' seventh studio album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, and the fifth episode of the Song Machine project, a web series involving the ongoing release of various Gorillaz tracks featuring different guest musicians over the course of 2020.

Background

The song was recorded in London, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was released to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the arcade game, Pac-Man.

Music video

The video, directed by Jamie Hewlett, Tim McCourt, and Max Taylor, features the band members inside Kong Studios, the band's fictional headquarters. 2-D is in the game room playing the Pac-Man arcade game, Russel does some boxing with a punching bag, Murdoc is in the basement, sitting inside an orgone accumulator, and Noodle is on the recording studio couch with her mobile phone while Schoolboy Q records his verse. As 2-D continues to play the arcade game for nine hours, all of his bandmates feel the effects of the arcade game, such as Murdoc looking outside his accumulator, Russel pausing from punching as though he heard something, and Noodle changing art styles, switching to an anime-esque style and then a Peanuts-like character. At the end of the video, Noodle goes down to the game room and unplugs the Pac-Man arcade game, leaving 2-D confused.

The video incorporates many references to the arcade game, including:

• The arcade cabinet artwork is sightly redrawn with 2-D as the ghost and Murdoc as Pac-Man.
• Murdoc is wearing Pac-Man underwear.
• The arcade game portrays the band members as 8-bit characters, with 2-D as Pac-Man and Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde replaced with the faces of Murdoc, Russel, and Noodle.

Track listing

Personnel

Gorillaz

• Damon Albarn – vocals, backing vocals, instrumentation, director, keyboards, bass, guitar, synthesizer, drums, percussion
• Jamie Hewlett – artwork, character design, video direction
• Remi Kabaka Jr. – percussion, drums

Additional musicians and personnel

• Schoolboy Q – vocals
• Prince Paul – backing vocals, engineering
• John Smythe – guitar
• Weathrman – bass, keyboards, synthesizer
• Stephen Sedgwick – mixing engineer, engineering
• Samuel Egglenton – engineering
• John Davis – mastering engineer
• Elvin "Wit" Shahbazian – engineering

Charts

References

1. Song Machine
2. Pac-Man (disambiguation)
3. Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez
4. Gorillaz discography
5. Gorillaz
6. Pac-Man 40th Anniversary
7. Pac-Man
8. Tupac Shakur
9. Strange Timez
10. Friday 13th (song)
11. Squeeze Box: The Complete Works of "Weird Al" Yankovic
12. Schoolboy Q
13. The Last Dragon
14. List of songs recorded by "Weird Al" Yankovic
15. Prince Paul (producer)
16. List of downloadable songs for the Rock Band series
17. Tron
18. Snoop Dogg discography
19. List of years in animation
20. Schoolboy Q discography