This radio-jingly track features Super Furry Animals' vocalist Gruff Rhys on the hook. He recalled to Q magazine March 2010: "The first I heard was a telegram from Murdoc. It was quite a feat finding their studio because it's not on the map. Even Google doesn't know where it is. In fact, the second time I was due to go there I didn't even manage to show up. I ended up singing and playing guitar on a couple of songs. One is 'Jellyfish,' which is a breakfast song, a breezy, early-morning track that makes you want to eat cornflakes."
The track also features American hip-hop group De La Soul, who previously contributed to
Demon Days' lead single "
Feel Good Inc." Kelvin "Posdnuos" Mercer of De La Soul told
Q magazine this "sounds like a souped-up, underwater commercial. It's a short but fatty song." He added: "We spent a week in the studio in total and tried a few ideas- another was Float Tropics, a cool, bass-filled, loopy song."
Posdnuos explained to The Guardian February 27, 2010 why they hooked up with Damon Albarn's virtual band for this track: "We had mutual friends who knew Damon, guys like Del Tha Funkee Homosapien and Dan The Automator, and we're hip to a challenge, so we love to get involved. When we walked in the studio we knew nothing about the track – we really had no idea what we were going to do – but we're really good friends now, we hang out a lot, so we feel comfortable with Damon and what he wants to do with the music. There were so many ideas flowing out, we heard all these different things that were possible to do. As a band, De La Soul feels similar to Gorillaz; we work in a similar way. They know how to manipulate music, they know that a voice can be an instrument, like we do.
We ended up working on three tracks. There was Electric Shock, a great song that was never finished, another called Float Tropics that was incredible, like club music, and then the track that's on the album, Superfast Jellyfish. The title alone called out, lyrically, for something funny. It sounded like a cool kids' commercial. We didn't know which track would make it. But a month or so later we heard Superfast Jellyfish and it sounded amazing. Gorillaz are part of our lives now; we'll always feel part of what they do. They're family!"
Gorillaz bassist Murdoc commented on this track: "When you think about Gorillaz, it makes sense to have a Super Furry Animal on there, doesn't it? I've always loved them, so I sent a jet over to pick Gruff up and take him over here.
A lot of fun, this track. If you turn it up loud enough all the colors start spilling and washing out of the speakers. You could flood your room with a track like this."
This samples a 1986 commercial for Swanson's microwave, "Great Starts Breakfasts."
The song originated with Damon Albarn's bassline. He got Gruff Rhys and a drummer to jam with him until he felt there was something happening. "The next time I heard it, De La Soul were rapping on it,"
Rhys recalled to The Guardian. "I'd bought their records as a teenager, so it was unbelievable."
Rhys said Albarn recorded a choir for the whole
Plastic Beach album, and he was in that choir, "so I'm probably on a lot of songs."
"Superfast Jellyfish" is a sharp, surreal critique of the modern music industry's obsession with speed, profit and mass appeal. Wrapped in cartoon absurdity and microwave jingles, the song compares disposable pop music to processed fast food: shiny on the outside, nutritionally void on the inside.
The "superfast jellyfish" in question are artists churned out at high speed, making music without thought, soul, or originality... just like the brainless sea creature. Everything ends up sounding the same, or as the song puts it, "tasting just like chicken." The public, Gorillaz suggests, has been duped into craving this sonic junk food: "Gotta have it super fast."
