Songfacts®:

• Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn duets with Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks on this song about the madness of war.
  
  Interlocking cluster bombs, "Like drum and bass," I thought
  Close the wells of poison, fill them up with love
  
  Albarn admitted during a Q+A session with comedian Alan Carr for Banquet Records (as reported by NME) that he didn't expect Nicks to come on board. "I didn't think for one second she'd want to do it, because it's a weird song," he said. "The lyrics start with 'interlocking clusterbombs' which isn't necessarily the first thing you share with somebody but she got what the song was inferring. It's about man, it's about war but she loved it. We were very lucky to get her involved."
• It's unclear why Albarn titled the song "Oil" as it doesn't appear in the lyrics. Maybe Albarn is employing the metaphor of being bombarded by interlocking cluster bombs to describe the poisonous hatred on planet Earth, and oil symbolizes this struggle.
• "Oil" came together very quickly with producer Greg Kurstin in LA as Albarn had previously recorded a demo version in London. Albarn initially set his sights on Julian Casablancas from The Strokes as the guest vocalist, but due to logistical reasons, it didn't work out. Then Kurstin's wife (who's also his manager) suggested Nicks.
  
  "We'd have these conversations with Damon," Kurstin recalled to Apple Music, "Who could we bring in to this project? Who does he know? Who do I know? I had been working with Stevie and become really good friends with her. Damon was very excited, he couldn't even believe that was a possibility."
• Before agreeing to the collaboration, Nicks said she had one demand, which was to get turned into one of the Gorillaz animated caricatures. "I want to be a Gorilla, and I want to have big, false eyelashes, and I want to have blonde hair," joked Nicks in an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 in 2022.
  
  Nicks added, "I learned that song as if I had written that song and as if I was an Englishman, with that accent. And I love it so much."
• At a Cracker Island listening party, Murdoc Niccals, one of the animated avatars of Gorillaz, offered his thoughts on this song. "Collaborating with Stevie was pure cosmic alchemy!" he said. "It was like two universes colliding, like creation itself. A new Big Bang. We're kindred spirits you know, me and Stevie. I heard she has a thing for dark magic and sorcery, which of course is right up my street."