[1] Albarn captured footage for the video guerilla-style in a variety of locations including Tokyo, London, Dallas, Utah, Iceland, Colchester, Devon, and North Korea.
"[1] Albarn had performed two stripped-down acoustic versions of "Lonely Press Play" on BBC Radio 2, and at the Sundance Festival with a small string section.
The Blur frontman has unveiled the studio version of his upcoming solo album's "Lonely Press Play," which he previously performed at Sundance, and both the song and its accompanying video – filled with simple yet majestic shots of air travel and time-passing gadgets – stand out for the simultaneously humane and awe-filled way they address our engagement with technology.
Yet so much time, effort, thought and energy goes into Albarn's every work that, once more, it should be no wonder that the song's album edit is commensurately splendid, sprinklings of intimate piano tinkering and mumbled bass lines accentuating another typically exemplary recording.
"[5] In his track-by-track review for The Sunday Times, Dan Cains wrote: "Like a funeral take on Gorillaz’ "Superfast Jellyfish" sprinkled with cabaret-lounge piano and disco strings, this combines a soul vocal, jarring, muffled beats and a chorus that begins with the work “arrhythmia.” It's at once utterly forlorn, cautiously optimistic and sonically warm, an Albarn trademark.