Lifetime Achievement - Damon Albarn

No one picks up the Lifetime Achievement Ivor Novello Award without having had a truly impressive career. But surely even few recipients of this most prestigious award have displayed the sheer breadth of songwriting attainment that Damon Albarn has.

After all, this is a man who has fronted not one, but two of the most successful bands of the last 25 years. Blur’s career alone would have been enough for most people (and, indeed, most lifetime achievement awards): after all, they were one of the few acts that could genuinely claim to have shifted the country’s music scene on its axis and taken alternative rock onto the tabloid front pages and 10 O’Clock News bulletins of the mainstream.

For all that hype and attention, Blur’s success was built on the natural songwriting partnership of Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon, which proved every bit as inspirational on last year’s comeback album The Magic Whip as it did on such enduring classics as Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), Parklife (1994) and Blur (1997).

Blur went on hiatus after 2003’s Think Tank album, recorded without Coxon, but between then and the 2009 reunion, Albarn was anything but idle. He’d already started Gorillaz, a band represented by cartoons but actually comprising a range of brilliant musicians, from The Clash’s Mick Jones to Bobby Womack. Globally, their achievements perhaps surpass even Blur’s, with songs such as Clint Eastwood, DARE, Feel Good Inc. and Stylo propelling them to millions of album sales around the world.

But even being in two hit bands isn’t enough for Albarn. Like a musical shark, he never sleeps and always keeps moving forward. So his musical career has also comprised a hugely successful solo album (2014’s Everyday Robots); alternative supergroups The Good, The Bad & The Queen and Rocket Juice & The Moon; regular forays into world and African music under the Mali Music and Africa Express banners; production and film soundtrack work and even wildly successful ventures into opera and musical theatre with Monkey: Journey To The West, Doctor Dee and Wonder.land.

Throughout it all, Albarn has maintained a renaissance everyman approach that means his work is always challenging, but never inaccessible. He may be a polymath, but all his music adds up, meaning he is one of the few modern songwriters whose mere presence on a project serves as a hallmark of quality. And, while you may never be certain which Damon Albarn is going to turn up, you can always guarantee he’ll be great company.