El Mañana (song)
| "El Mañana" | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||||||||||||
| Single by Gorillaz featuring Neneh Cherry | ||||||||||||||
| from the album Demon Days | ||||||||||||||
| Released | 10 April 2006 | |||||||||||||
| Format | 7", CD, DVD | |||||||||||||
| Recorded | 2004 | |||||||||||||
| Genre | Alternative rock, trip hop | |||||||||||||
| Length | 3:47 | |||||||||||||
| Label | Parlophone | |||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | 2D, Murdoc Niccals, Neneh Cherry | |||||||||||||
| Producer(s) | Gorillaz, Danger Mouse, Jason Cox, James Dring | |||||||||||||
| Gorillaz singles chronology | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
"El Mañana" (Spanish for "The Future", direct translation being "The Tomorrow") is a song by the virtual band Gorillaz. It was released on 10 April 2006 in the United Kingdom as a double A-side, and the fourth and final singles from their album Demon Days. "El Mañana", along with its other A-side "Kids with Guns", reached number 27 upon its release in the UK, a significantly lower position than its predecessors.
"El Mañana" was a full-budget video from Passion Pictures, directed by Jamie Hewlett and Pete Candeland. According to Gorillaz.com, the video was to be released 11 March 2006. It is a continuation of the "Feel Good Inc." video. Noodle is floating along peacefully in the sunshine on her floating island. Suddenly two helicopters (resembling the RAH-66 Comanche) catch up to the island and begin to fire upon Noodle with machine guns. As Noodle flees into the windmill, the helicopters smash into the sails and destroy them. When Noodle comes out of the windmill, the windmill is now in flames from the onslaught of the attacking helicopters, and the ground, once lush, green and full of life, was now barren and empty. The helicopter pilots see her and start to attack again, and she is forced back inside the windmill. The stricken island then starts to lose altitude and falls down into a canyon. Then one of the two helicopters drops a bomb and they fly off. Though it may appear that Noodle is seen parachuting to safety during the crash sequence at 3:27 of the video, the parachute-like object is actually a shrub that is torn from the ground to the left of the windmill as it falls towards the earth, as seen at 3:21.
For a few weeks before the video release, a series of events had been taking place. First, at Kong Studios on the Gorillaz website, boxes and other packing materials were seen in the lobby on 16 February 2006. A few weeks later, they were moved into Noodle's room. Subsequently, Noodle apparently began to pack the contents of her room into those boxes, and the windmill from the "Feel Good Inc." video was seen tethered to the balcony. After 7 March, as an intro before entering Kong Studios, a movie would play depicting the windmill flying away. At Gorillaz website, Noodle's room is largely barren, although the links associated with her belongings are still accessible and Shaun Ryder's head, introduced in the music video for "DARE", is still hooked up behind the partition. As of 13 March, her room started to crack around the corners on the walls. Additionally, the "Armageddon clock" on the wall had appeared to have slowed down and had an additional fourth hand. The clock has fallen off the wall and a part of the ceiling has collapsed, revealing a corridor from both Noodle's room and the Map. It was theorized that the events of the video are not merely staged because the helicopters change in appearance. In "Feel Good Inc." they are lighter, and seem to more closely resemble Bell 47Gs. In "El Mañana", they appear heavier and more armoured, seemingly modeled more like the Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters. This would seem to indicate that Noodle was pursued in the "Feel Good Inc." video, stayed at Kong Studios, packed up, departed, and was then pursued by two different helicopters in the "El Mañana" video. According to the fictional history of the band, Noodle found that she was in fact a test subject in a secret government super soldier project. The limited edition of Demon Days includes a DVD full of bonus features, including the "Feel Good Inc." video with audio commentary by the band members (Gorillaz), confirming that "Feel Good Inc." was indeed staged.
...
Wikipedia