Bad Bunny brings Gorillaz on stage in London for two songs

Bad Bunny wrapped up his only UK dates on his world tour with a memorable surprise guest appearance. On Sunday evening, June 28, during the second and final show at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, Gorillaz and frontman Damon Albarn turned up unannounced on stage. Together they performed two songs: Tormenta, taken from the Gorillaz album Cracker Island, and the iconic Clint Eastwood. Bad Bunny features on the studio version of Tormenta, and the two artists go back a while. Albarn revealed in a 2021 conversation with Warp that he and Bad Bunny had linked up while both staying in Jamaica.

The London show falls within the closing stretch of the Puerto Rican rapper and singer's massive Debí Tirar Más Fotos world tour, which has taken him through Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia in support of his 2024 album of the same name. After London, the tour moves to mainland Europe in July, with shows in cities including Marseille, Paris, Stockholm, Warsaw, Milan and Brussels.

Interestingly, Gorillaz themselves had also performed at that same Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, on June 20, just eight days earlier. That was the London collective's first ever stadium show, a milestone the group considered so significant that a documentary about it is now in the works. The band had already played a run of arena shows across the UK earlier this year and used those dates to release the new track The Mountain.

Elsewhere in his London set, Bad Bunny also showed his appreciation for British music history by playing the intro to Oasis's Wonderwall on the cuatro, a traditional Puerto Rican string instrument, before transitioning into the album track TURiSTA. That moment captures much of the appeal of the album: the way the artist weaves Caribbean folk music together with reggaeton and other influences.

For Dutch and Belgian music fans, the announcement of nearby concert dates is worth noting. On July 22, Bad Bunny is scheduled to play the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels, the closest show for fans from the Low Countries. Anyone who also wants to experience the Gorillaz collaboration live may be in luck if the duo shares a stage again, though nothing has been confirmed on that front.

Gorillaz are meanwhile also busy beyond the concert stage with their own history. The immersive exhibition House of Kong, which debuted in London last year and takes fans through 25 years of music, characters and artwork from the Gorillaz world, is heading to New York soon. From September 1, the exhibition opens at the Agger Fish Building in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where it will run through September 28.