Gnarls Barkey's "Crazy" QUICK! Love it before everyone else does!

Cafe Society
1

Because when it’s being played EVERYWHERE and everyone you know loves the song and it wins a whole passel of awards including the Grammy for Song of the Year, you’ll probably be sick of it by then.

Until then, enjoy! You can thank me later.

Seriously, get ready for the earworm to end all earworms! I noticed it was mentioned in the earworm thread but not remarked upon.

http://www.myspace.com/gnarlsbarkley

The song is also at their web site, though you need Flash for both of these. At the web site, the player is barely visible up at the top right, and you click the >| icon to switch through songs. Unless it changes every time, “Crazy” is the 2nd song. The first song (for me) is “Smiley Faces.”
I never listen to this kind of music. I never listen to the radio, but I keep going back to Gnarls Barley’s MySpace page and I listen to this song over and over. It’s very addictive.

Once in a while a song comes along that’s an instant classic and so totally addictive that genre doesn’t matter, and you just know that it’s going to take over the world. For now I just can’t get enough of this song.

Unless you live in the UK (where it’s been #1 for weeks) or are a MySpace slut, you probably haven’t heard this song. Don’t worry. You will. Oh my, will you. This very well might be THE song of the summer and I can see it sweeping the Grammys and every other musical awards show. And it’ll be deserved! The song harkens back to the old Motown days in feel and style, it’s grooving, it’s catchy, it’s one of those songs where you don’t need the lyrics to love it, but as a bonus the lyrics are actually interesting.

Gnarls Barkley are two guys, Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo, and they are having so much fun. On the MySpace site you’ll see several picutures of them in various movie poses (A Clockwork Orange, Up In Smoke, The Big Lebowski, Nightmare on
Elm Street and others), The artwork department went absolutely nuts with creativity regarding posters and design (that alone is going to win some awards), the videos (there are at least 2 versions) are killer creative and fascinating, and if it all weren’t so great enough, the record companies involved (Downtown / Atlantic / Warners) are actually embracing the Internet and doing things right.

  1. they have 4 songs from the album, including “Crazy” available on MySpace.

  2. a few weeks ago the ENTIRE album was on MySpace. You could listen to the whole thing.

  3. they just posted all their lyrics via a MySpace Bulletin

  4. they allow their shows to be video and audiotaped. They just posted a link to several YouTube fan videos of their Coachella performance.

I think this is an experiment by the record companies. Let it all out there and let the people decide. In this case, the people are going to go nuts for “Crazy” and I’ll betcha it’ll be a massive hit all over the world for weeks and weeks and weeks,
and it couldn’t happen to a nicer song.

All that’s just off the top of my head. I haven’t read any articles or reviews or any press at all about the band/song. If I’m just stating what everybody else already knows because they keep up with what’s going on more, then never mind. :slight_smile:

Gnarls Barkley are going to be on Conan O’Brian this Wednesday. It’ll be interesting to see how they do the song. I was just on YouTube looking at the videos (the two very different versions are both very cool) and I watched an appearance on Top of the Pops in England, where the band and backup singers were all dressed as airline pilots and flight attendants. That version of the song was totally different, very slowed-down. They turned a catchy, uptempo song into a haunting, Motown ballad. And it worked! I think it shows how good the underlying song is.

I never pay attention to the charts, but this is a song I’ll keep an eye on. I swear I’ve heard it 20 times today, but I love it just as much each and every time. I may yet get sick of it, but not yet. This is what radio used to be filled from end-to-end with, good, solid, classic songs. Anyone who’s surprised that I’d be listening to something like this shouldn’t be. I grew up with 60’s and 70’s Top 40, and loved it to death, back when it was very eclectic and before they compartmentalized genres (in America). I had a stack of Motown singles too. I don’t know if it’s nostalgia that’s making me love this song or what. I just know that I do.

2

Well put.
I’m thinking Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ is gonna be big this summer, because it’s quality music that’s accessible. It might be the next “Hey ya”.

3

I’ve been hearing it on my local alternative station for a while. I really like it. Hopefully I’ll still feel that way in September after hearing it for the 9,547 time.

4

Yeah, I first heard this last October, and I was underwhelmed then and I’m underwhelmed now. i just don’t get it. The song is ok, but I don’t see it being the ridiculously awesome pop smash that “Hey Ya,” was, and if it does become that successful, I’m not going to understand why. It just doesn’t sound like a hit to me. It sounds like Danger Mouse on one of his more boring days.

And the thing is, I should like it. Goodie Mob were classic, and Cee-Lo’s solo stuff has been of a high standard too. His most recent record, Cee-Lo Green is the Soul Machine was pretty great. And the same with Danger Mouse - the Grey Album was clever and he did really enjoyable stuff with Jemini on Ghetto Pop Life. Actually, I’m pretty sick of all DM’s goofy side projects - the Gorillaz stuff is forgettable and for the most part the DangerDoom record was only good for hearing [adult swim] characters on a rap album. Danger Mouse needs to go back to producing straight up rap records. He’s much better as an indie Just Blaze than a wacky pop writer.

If you want to hear Cee-lo teaming up with a hot producer, you’d be better off listening to “Art of Noise” (with the Neptunes) or “I’ll Be Around” (with Timbaland), both off Soul Machine.

Or unless you’ve read an indie music or hip hop web site in the past 6 months.

5

Good smack-down, and fast too! I’m impressed.

6

Yeah I heard this a few months ago & really liked it but am pretty much over it now. :slight_smile: Enjoy!

7

Sorry, I didn’t mean to come off like that. Just, you know, not everyone’s going to like it, and this time I’m that guy. I’m sure I sounded pretty snarky and elitist, but really, I’m just disappointed. DM and Cee-Lo are talented guys, but I wish their big hit was something I liked more.

8

I’m pretty much with cold cold night on this one; huge fan of DM’s other work and Cee-Lo’s solo as well as Goodie Mob stuff, but “Crazy” sounds like an unfinished demo to me. There’s been a certain quality in DM’s work lately - on the DangerDoom record and Gorillaz records in particular, though they were big-budget - that sounds cheap, chintzy, “demo,” unfinished, and thin to me, like he’s just using a bunch of common software presets for the sounds. Don’t get me wrong, I loved “Demon Days” and thought it was a great collab, but I think the guy’s gotten to the point where he feels like he doesn’t have to slave over beats as much and can get away with just calling up “rap drumkit #17” or “funky synth bass” presets in his software - which, for a guy who always sounded like a real digger to me, seems like a definite decline.

I do think that the slowed-down, torchy version of the song that they did on Top of the Pops was just phenomenal, and I wish the original sounded more like that.

9

I’m not saying it’s the best song ever recorded, but I can see this becoming very popular since it’s catchy and has a lot of substance compared to other songs dominating the pop charts.

10

If anything, I think Cee-Lo deserves recognition because he is certainly soulful and true to his art. I still like his good solo material better (“Childz play” was ripping!) but I see the quality of “Crazy” and it’s definitely more interesting than the endless stream of guitar-noodling twenty-somethings and blonde drama queens that dominate the air waves.

11

Too late to love it before everyone else does. Once it’s been on Best Week Ever, it’s already old.
At least that’s what my kids tell me.

12

But I get the OP’s excitement. The first time I heard that song I knew, deep down, that this was going to become The Jam. Oddly they don’t play the song on the local rap and R&B station, they play it on the alternitive rock station. This limits it’s chances for reaching the next level, The Jam Of The Summer.

But damn, I like me some soul music, and this stuff feels good…

13

I think the whole album is excellent. The title track “St. Elsewhere” is almost as addictive as “Crazy”.

The video for “Crazy” is pretty nifty too. I’d link to it on youtube but the site seems to be down at the moment.

14

It was actually one of Pitchforks’ top 50 singles of 2005:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/top/2005/singles/index2.shtml

15

Dude, I have soo been listening to this for like over a WEEK now.
Go Go Gadget Gospel is one of the better opening tracks I’ve heard on an album in a while, and then it transitions into Crazy quite nicely. Pretty solid album.

16

Oops, sorry about that. I didn’t mean to sound like a pompous ass. Even if I am obviously way hipper than alls y’all.

17

Hey, I’ve been listening to this since late 2005, so I am obviously quite hip :slight_smile: