Gorillaz finally showed up to Saturday Night Live and they brought everyone with them. Nearly 25 years after their debut, the virtual band made their long overdue first appearance on the late night program on March 7, during an episode hosted by Ryan Gosling. They opened with “Clint Eastwood,” the song that made them, while Del the Funky Homosapien walked out to deliver his verses exactly as he did on the 2001 original. The group played in front of a massive screen displaying the band’s animated characters as the real thing unfolded in front of it.

The second performance landed differently. Albarn and company delivered “The Moon Cave” with onstage appearances from singer-songwriter Asha Puthli, The Roots’ Black Thought and sitar player Anoushka Shankar, the whole thing anchored by a lively string section. The song is built around absence. On the album version, posthumous contributions come from guitarist Bobby Womack and Dave Jolicoeur of De La Soul. Albarn told Rolling Stone: “I just thought, if we’re going to talk about the subject of death, I need some people who are dead to help me talk about it.”

Both performances were in support of The Mountain, the band’s ninth studio album, out February 27, which debuted at number one on the U.K.‘s Official Albums Chart and is their third chart topper in the country. According to Pitchfork, the appearances mark a milestone for a band that has spent over two decades reshaping what a music act can look like. The Mountain tour begins this month in the U.K., with Gorillaz also headlining Barcelona’s Primavera Sound in June and Atlanta’s Shaky Knees in September. mxdwn previously covered the band’s fall 2026 North American tour announcement with Little Simz and Deltron 3030, their Hollywood Palladium playback shows and the animated short film released alongside The Mountain.

Photo credit: Marv Watson