Songfacts®:

• "Silent Running" is a nautical term that refers to a mode of operation where a submarine lies on the ocean's floor with its engines cut to prevent detection. The phrase gained popularity after the 1972 science fiction film Silent Running, in which a spacecraft crew traveling through deep space maintained "silent running" to avoid detection by other ships.
  
  Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn applies the phrase to illustrate how sometimes he becomes so absorbed in something he fades into a trance. It concerns "that sort of mesmerizing dreamlike state you get in when you're just following some train of thought," he explained.
  
  Gorillaz's virtual vocalist, 2-D, added: "Sometimes I get well lost and end up in the wrong place but then it turns out that's where I was meant to be going anyway."
• Gorillaz have referenced submarines before, especially on their 2010 Plastic Beach album. During that record's "On Melancholy Hill," Albarn sings:
  
  So call in the submarines
  'Round the world we'll go
• Adeleye Omotayo, a singer in the Gorillaz' live band, joins Albarn on this song. Omotayo was one of Amy Winehouse's backing singers.
• Albarn co-wrote and co-produced "Silent Running" with Greg Kurstin for Gorillaz's eighth album, Cracker Island. This was the song that set the standard for the record.
  
  "It just started the whole process for us," Kurstin told Apple Music. "'Here's the bar, this is what we can do, and let's try to see if we can even beat it!'"
• Albarn and Kurstin knocked out the song in two to three hours. "That was the fun part about it, just this whirlwind of throwing things against the wall and then recording them-and I'm kind of mixing as I'm going as well," said Kurstin. "By the end of the day, it sounded like the finished product did."
• Gorillaz debuted "Silent Running" live when they kicked off their 2022 World Tour at Antel Arena, Montevideo, Uruguay on April 28, 2022.
• The virtual band released "Silent Running" as the fifth single from Cracker Island on January 27, 2023.