Clint Eastwood

The Gorillaz's first hit single Clint Eastwood was released on March 5th 2001 on their self-titled album.

Music Video

The animated music video was directed by Jamie Hewlett and Pete Candeland. It starts with the Gorillaz logo in red against a black screen, and the following quote from the 1978 film Dawn of the Dead: "Every dead body that is not exterminated, gets up and kills. The people it kills, get up and kill" in Japanese then in English. This phrase was deemed offensive in some countries and a censored version was produced that omits this intro. The video and song name is a reference to the famous western starring actor Clint Eastwood, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. An interpolation of the yell from the film's theme song, in particular that film's protagonist Tuco's leitmotif, can be heard at the beginning of the video, followed by sinister laughter from Murdoc. The notes that the melodica plays are also based on the yell.
The band is seen playing their music against a completely white backdrop. 2-D is seen wearing a T-Virus shirt most likely referencing Resident Evil. Russel's cap then begins to mysteriously rise on its own, and the ghost of Del appears to be emerging from under it. He begins to rap, leaving the other band members dumbfounded, and the backdrop slowly develops dark clouds in the sky, and enormous tombstones start to burst out of the ground, and the scene becomes that of a cemetery, as a shower of rain and thunderstorm begins. Shortly afterwards, zombie gorilla hands rise up from the ground. Murdoc is grabbed by the crotch and pulled to the ground, a reference to the Peter Jackson zombie film Braindead. Seconds later, the zombie gorillas themselves rise up. Murdoc immediately flees at the sight of them, with a number of them pursuing him. He then turns and glares at them out of frustration at his inability to escape, and the zombie apes engage in a bizarre dance routine before Murdoc is finally struck by lightning; this dance routine is similar to the choreography of Michael Jackson's music video "Thriller."
Noodle is then shown joyfully skipping along, almost as if she is completely unaware of her surroundings, and in her playful skipping, she delivers a hard kick to one of the zombie gorillas in the face. Immediately afterwards, Del is then sucked back into Russel's head as the gorillas all disintegrate, and the band members are left standing in the cemetery, now bright with sunlight. The video then concludes with a split screen showing each of the four band members and their names. The video has a running time of 4:32, which is significantly different from the album version, which runs for approximately 5:44, however, the album version features about 1:30 of the backing track playing with no vocals over the top. The BPM of the music video is also slightly slower than that of the album version.

Popularity

On March 23rd 2017, The Official Phase 4 kickstarter video "Saturnz Barz" was released and featured the Gorillaz moving into a Haunted House. Two minutes in, Murdoc Niccals (Leader of the Band) comes across the bathroom and exclaims

The Bath! Hey You Guys I'm Just Going To Take A Bath!

This was soon remixed with a few other Gorillaz's songs including Feel Good Inc, Clint Eastwood and some Word Replacments.

Clint Eastwood was the most remixed and eventually got it's first meme remix with Murdoc getting hit by lightning on shooting stars. It's most famous one was by Chris Kogos's "Clint Memeswood."