Oliver Tree

Gorillaz's 'Clint Eastwood' split its vocal in two — frontman Damon Albarn crooning the hook, rapper Del the Funky Homosapien handling the verse — and Tree spent years trying to be both people at once. 'Gorillaz are single-handedly the biggest inspiration for the Oliver Tree project,' he told SPIN in 2020, naming that song specifically: 'my song "Bury Me Alive" is a great example of how I was able to take on the role of both Damon Albarn and Del the Funky Homosapien.' It's the rare influence he names as blueprint, not just taste.

listen: upstream & heresource: SPIN — Oliver Tree's 'Nostalgic Rock' Playlist (Gorillaz, Bowie, Radiohead influence quotes) ↗share

2001

Clint EastwoodGorillaz

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2020

Bury Me AliveOliver Tree

listen forPlay 'Clint Eastwood' and catch the handoff — a laid-back, half-sung hook giving way to a clipped rap verse, then swinging back. 'Bury Me Alive' runs the same trade inside one voice: Tree slides from a melodic, downcast chorus into a faster, rapped verse and back, chasing the two-vocalist structure Gorillaz split across a whole cartoon band. It isn't a cover or a sample — it's the composition trick itself, borrowed and rebuilt for a solo act.

Tree's dad played him David Bowie in middle school, and one line from a 2020 SPIN essay does most of the explaining: 'David Bowie was the original Alien Boy.' He credits Bowie less for a sound than for a method — 'the way he developed his persona really influenced the Oliver Tree project heavily and the storytelling aspect of his songs is impeccable' — the same trick of writing a character sturdy enough to carry a whole career, which Tree built his own act around.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1969

Space OddityDavid Bowie

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2018

Alien BoyOliver Tree

listen forSet 'Space Oddity' against 'Alien Boy' and the shared move is the vantage point: both put the singer alone in the sky, watching the world get smaller, a drifting outsider narrating his own disappearance rather than singing a straight love song or brag. Bowie plays it as science fiction; Tree plays it as autobiography with a costume on, but the lonely, floating character at the center — the name he borrowed outright — is the same one.

At eight years old, Tree begged his dad to turn off OK Computer in the car. Ten years later, recording as 'Tree,' he flew to London to cut his own version of one of its songs and got the band's blessing to release it. 'Thom Yorke was my biggest hero,' he told SPIN in 2020, and the music site Cover Me marveled at the same story from outside it: 'it's not every day that a musician who is barely 20 gets permission from Thom Yorke' for a cover of a Radiohead song. It appeared on his 2013 EP Demons, years before the 'Oliver Tree' persona existed.

listen: upstream & heresource: SPIN — Oliver Tree's 'Nostalgic Rock' Playlist (Gorillaz, Bowie, Radiohead influence quotes) ↗share

1997

Karma PoliceRadiohead

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2013

Karma PoliceOliver Tree

listen forLine up both versions and the cover doesn't hide its debt: the same slow, dread-laced build, the same plainspoken vocal floating just above a spare arrangement. Where Yorke sounds hollowed-out and resigned over a wash of guitar feedback, the 19-year-old cutting the cover pushes into that same cracked, plaintive register, backed by a string quartet he brought into the session. It's the clearest evidence in this catalog that the persona was built by someone who could actually sing.