“You can’t at this point, do holograms. … This is what happened at the Grammys,” Albarn explained to MTV. “We opened the Grammys – on television it looked great – but we had an invisible film pulled across our stage, and you project onto that, and put smoke behind it – it’s a Victorian technology, actually.

“So Madonna manages to come and gate-crash our idea, as people like Madonna do, because that’s why they’re so deep. … She gate-crashed our idea, so we couldn’t play with any bass or any sound, because it would vibrate [the film] so it was really quiet.

“So we open the Grammys, but no one could hear us, in this huge, great arena, and we were crestfallen at that moment. And I’m trying to get Bono to move, because his huge, great Stetson is obscuring my view. And then our song stops, and she appears on the other side of the stage, with her inflated-ABBA riff, at full volume, and the place just goes insane. And at [that] point, I just thought, ‘You know what? Sometimes, just keep it simple.’”