M1 A1 is at its heart a punky stomper of a track. The epic intro with dialogue from 'Day Of The Dead' would probably have been better at the start of the album (M1 A1 opened the Phase One live shows to great effect). It is possible that an early version of the song actually featured a line about Zombies because the picture booklet that came with the UK digipack version of the Gorillaz album contains the line 'At a thousand miles an hour I passed through the zombie towns that eat the land and spit it out on the M1'. In the UK motorways (the biggest type of road in the UK) are labelled M1, M2, etc. So the M1 is a motorway in Britain. Similarly there are A roads (one class down from motorways) labelled A1, A2, etc. It has also been remarked that there is a type of American tank called the M1 A1, but given the lyric in the booklet, and the joke that is made in the title of Lil' Dub Chefin' (see the entry on Lil' Dub Chefin' for a full explanation), it is more likely to refer to the roads. Part of this song also featured as the backgorund music for the first intro to the Gorillaz site.

Official song credits

Written by Gorillaz
Performed by Gorillaz
Contains portions of 'Day Of The Dead', music John Harrison
Produced by Dan The Automator and Gorillaz
Co-produced by Tom Girling and Jason Cox
Engineered by Tom Girling and Jason Cox
Pro-Tools by Tom Girling
Assistant engineer: Toby Whelan

Versions & availibility(Click links for exact discographical details)

M1 A1 [3:50] - Available on all versions of the Gorillaz debut album. In the initial pressings of the UK version, the Ed Case Refix follows after the end of the track after a pause

Live

Played live on every date on the phase one tour as the opener, intro with the 'hello...!' part included. The video featured a small dot on the screen that grew larger and larger, with the Gorillaz flying around suspended in space in it - when the song kicked in this changed to repeated flashing and brightly coloured images of the characters.