Gorillaz

In 1998, musician Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett created a band that didn't exist. Albarn would write and produce the music; Hewlett would draw the band. The result was four cartoon characters who became more real to audiences than the humans behind them: 2-D on vocals and keyboards, Murdoc Niccals on bass, Noodle on guitar and keyboards, and Russel Hobbs on drums. Each had a biography, a personality, feuds with the others, and a willingness to give interviews about their band drama — while Albarn and Hewlett stayed out of the spotlight.

On March 26, 2001, the self-titled Gorillaz album reached No. 3 on the UK Albums Chart and eventually sold over 7 million copies worldwide. The breakthrough single was "Clint Eastwood," carried by an animated music video that ran on MTV right alongside flesh-and-blood pop stars. And the fiction held on stage: from 2001 to 2005, the real musicians performed behind screens while the cartoon members were projected for the audience. Kids of the 2000s knew 2-D's face the way they knew any pop star's. Most had never seen Damon Albarn.

Demon Days, released May 11, 2005, took it further — six-times platinum in the UK, double platinum in the US, the project's commercial peak — led by "Feel Good Inc.," which won the Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals at the 48th Grammy Awards in February 2006. That same night produced the project's defining image: Gorillaz opened the ceremony performing "Feel Good Inc." as life-size projections rendered with Musion Eyeliner technology, joined by De La Soul — and Madonna then took the stage for "Hung Up." A cartoon band opening the Grammys was genuinely new.

By the 2010 tour the approach had flipped, and the musicians performed in full view — the secret no longer kept, and no longer needed. Gorillaz had proven a band didn't need visible celebrity faces to sell millions of records: the animated videos, the invented biographies, and the projected concerts added up to a pop act whose fiction was the point. Two decades before virtual performers became commonplace, the cartoon band had already headlined the Grammys.