Songfacts®:

• "Strange Timez" is the sixth single from Gorillaz's Song Machine music and cartoon project. In each episode, the animated outfit release a new song and video with previously unannounced guest musicians. In this instance, the collaborator is Robert Smith of The Cure, who contributes vocals, guitar, keyboards and bass.
• This slice of galloping art-rock is the first single from Song Machine Gorillaz recorded during the Covid era; its lyrics reflect both the pandemic and some of the other extraordinary events transpired during 2020, including the Black Lives Matter movement and climate change protests.
  
  Battle war of the worlds, surgical glove world, bleach thirsty world
  I'm twitching in the grimy heat, I think I might be spinning
  
  Smith's head is spinning at all the terrible stuff going on in the world right now.
• Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn explained to Steve Lamacq on BBC Radio 6 Music that the collaboration with Robert Smith was done by email during lockdown. When The Cure received the demo he immediately fell in love with it. He recalled: "I thought it was excellent. I felt ripples in the force and I thought, 'I better get this done.'"
• Asked if he had specifically written the song to feature Smith, Albarn replied: "No, no, no. What I gave Robert was something very vague. He completely and utterly made it what it is."
• The colorful, Jamie Hewlett-directed video features Gorillaz's signature animated characters traveling to the moon, on which Robert Smith's face is superimposed.
• That's Damon Albarn's 9-year-old niece playing the trumpet. The proud uncle told Elton John on Apple Music 1's Rocket Hour: "She's absolutely brilliant, I let her go nuts on it, she's got two or three notes, but boy does she play."
• Damon Albarn of Gorillaz has long been a Cure fan, and when Robert Smith sent him his contribution for this song, he was excited that he'd get to sing with him. However, when he tried to do so, the Gorillaz frontman found their voices didn't work together, so he adopted the German recital technique of Sprechgesang.
  
  Sprechgesang is a vocal technique that lies somewhere between speaking and singing. It dates back to the Romantic German operas that were composed by Richard Wagner and others in the second half of the 19th century. The B-52s frontman Fred Schneider is well known in the pop world for his flamboyant sprechgesang vocals, which he developed from reciting poetry over guitars.