The Valley of the Pagans

The Valley of The Pagans is a song from Gorillaz' seventh studio album Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez and a part of Gorillaz' 2020 web series Song Machine. It premiered on the Gorillaz YouTube channel on November 5, 2020 as Episode Eight.undefined The song features American singer and songwriter, Beck.

History and Production
The Valley of the Pagans is one of the tracks made during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020. On August 2nd, 2020 the demo version of the song was leaked alongside a short snippet of Chalk Tablet Towers. The Valley of the Pagans was officially released on October 23, 2020 on the Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez album. The track was then released as the ninth and final single of the first season of Song Machine on November 5, 2020. The song's original music video is a machinima set in Grand Theft Auto V. Four days after it premiered on the band's YouTube page, the video was set to private. There was speculation at the time that the video may had been removed due to possibly showing a spoiler for an upcoming Grand Theft Auto Online update. However, this was simply misinformation caused by the fans of Grand Theft Auto mistaking Plastic Beach for the then-rumored island of Cayo Perico, which was later added to the game on 15 December 2020 as part of the Cayo Perico Heist update. The video was likely removed due to fair use disputes with Rockstar Games, which owns the Grand Theft Auto franchise. An alternate version of the video replacing all references to Grand Theft Auto with the footage reused from the Song Machine Live visualisers was uploaded to YouTube on March 9, 2021. The drums and percussion on the track were provided by Rudy Albarn, nephew of Gorillaz co-creator Damon Albarn.

Trivia

 * At the very end of the music video, a portal sends the band to Plastic Beach which is a setup for The Lost Chord music video.