Tormenta
by Gorillaz (featuring Bad Bunny)

Album: Cracker Island (2023)
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Songfacts®:

  • Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn steps out of his comfort zone with this collaboration with Puerto Rican reggaeton artist Bad Bunny. Reggaeton is a combination of reggae, dancehall, hip-hop and Latin American music styles.
  • Damon Albarn attributes their hookup to his daughter Missy and her friend Salima. The two girls attended the local Spanish school and developed a deep appreciation for Latin music and reggaeton.

    After the girls put Bad Bunny on Albarn's radar, he and the Puerto Rican star exchanged messages for a prolonged period before finally deciding to work together.
  • When Albarn traveled to Jamaica to work on the Gorillaz EP Meanwhile after lockdown ended, he visited Bunny in Puerto Rico, which is close by.

    They recorded the track quickly and spontaneously after a tremendous storm. Inspired by the bad weather, Bad Bunny speaks of a love interest who is his "sun in the storm." ("Tormenta" is Spanish for "storm").
  • Damon Albarn joins Bad Bunny on the English chorus but leaves the Spanish verses to the Puerto Rican. "I could do the, 'Oi, oi,' bit. It's quite hard to sing in another language," Albarn told Matt Wilkinson on Apple Music 1. "I would do it at some point, but on this occasion we only had an afternoon really and it all came together super quick. I actually afterwards tried to do loads of different things of it and change it but actually what we did in that afternoon was the best version of it."
  • Murdoc Niccals told his version of this song's story in the listening party for Cracker Island: "One hell of a ride, this track. We were in Jamaica when we recorded this. Right in the middle of a cyclone. The wind was howling, the rain was lashing down, palm trees were bending as if they were made of salami. It was as if the universe was trying to tell us something. And there we were in the middle of it forging something beautiful out of the chaos. I was the almighty, conducting a symphony out of nature, and 'Tormenta' was my magnum opus. I gotta say, collaborating with Bad Bunny was incredible. That boy's got some real talent."

    Murdoc, the virtual bass player in the band, is prone to exaggeration and confabulation, so take it with a grain of salt.

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