Rock It (Gorillaz song)

"Rock It"
Song

"Rock It" is a song by virtual band Gorillaz. This video was released exclusively as a promo video on the band's website on December 8, 2004. Unlike the other Gorillaz videos, which were produced by Passion Pictures, Rock It was made by Jamie Hewlett's own company, Zombie Flesh Eaters. The video was released the same day Kong Studios reopened, and is the first official music video of Phase Two: Slowboat To Hades. It is also the only song to be made as a music video to not be released as a single, and is the only Phase Two video not released from the Demon Days album.

The video is a tribute to the 1973 horror film The Exorcist. It begins with a close up of the eerie face of Pazuzu, the demon statue from the beginning of The Exorcist. The camera reels back to reveal a red sun shining over the statue, when vines spring forth. We then cut to Gorillaz, walking near Kong Studios in the graveyard. As 2D sings, zombie heads pop up and land on the ground below them. The heads are a direct reference to Terry Gilliam's stream-of-consciousness photo-montage animations in the television series Monty Python's Flying Circus (complemented by texts in the similar style), and appear to be sell-out celebrities. The band apparently neither cares nor notices these heads and continues to walk on. When the chorus begins, the focus is on the Pazuzu statue, who says Rock it over and over while 2D sings, and at least half of these lyrics are repetitions of "blah". This repeats twice more until the third time, where Pazuzu says the words the view slowly reel back. Also, it can be seen that 2-D's eyes are strangely white in this, despite true canon showing them to be black. At the very end of the video, a zombie head version resembling Captain Howdy, the white demonic face from The Exorcist appears on the screen.

The video was the beginning of the Reject False Icons campaign. Fans suggest that this video was a influence for the song "Spitting out the Demons"

Trivia

The Reject False Icons statue is considered by many Gorillaz fans to be the unofficial mascot for Phase 2. In additon to the Rock It video, it has also appeared in the Dare music video at the very beginning, in countless Gorillaz drawings, mechandise, and imagery, as the mascot for the Reject False Icons campaign, and is featured on the cover of the Slowboat To Hades DVD. The appearance of the statue is based on that of Pazuzu, the demon from The Exorcist.

Noodle mouths "follow" near the end of the video.

The meaning of this video is much like Feel Good Inc. Also, during the chorus 2D seems to wake up and sing "I didn't mean to do it, it left me in my head, I tried to be a charmer, I gotta big hole left instead. The world is very sexy, it's part of my collapse, it's part of my collapse..."

External links

• "Rock It" video at official Gorillaz website