12/27/2023 0 Comments Gnarls barkley st. elsewhere songsElsewhere, but everything about Gnarls Barkley seems contrived as a show, from the duo's disguise-like costumes to the way the songs seem to burst in and out, sometimes in less than three minutes. ![]() "It's even dark in the daytime," Cee-Lo sings on "Just a Thought." "It's not just good, it's great depression/When I was lost I even found myself looking in the gun's direction." Bummer. ![]() It would be a great album to wallow in if it weren't such quick-hit fun. Gnarls Barkley gleefully, soulfully serves up meditations on suicide, necrophilia, loneliness and (sure, why not!) overzealous feng shui. The music is so infectious - tambourines, chugging beats - that sometimes the lyrics come as a surprise. With its eerie organ accompaniments and low, lamenting choruses, it sometimes feels like an episode of Scooby Doo crossed with a Motown reunion. Elsewhere looks a lot like it feels, and the mentally-unstable theme pervades more than the hit single. He can go from sounding like he's moaning an old spiritual to sounding like he's a newfangled preacher. Is the Soul Machine on the radio, but it wasn't that song that made me add his solo album to my wish list - it was "Crazy." Green is relentlessly on point - screeching, crooning and harmonizing over himself in a way that recalls Terence Trent D'Arby, and even sometimes Erykah Badu. I remember hearing the Timbaland-produced song "I'll Be Around," from 2004's Cee-Lo Green. Elsewhere is to wonder why he ever bothered to do anything else. Cee-Lo was a member of the Atlanta hip-hop group Goodie Mob. The latter is known for The Grey Album, his mash-up of the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album. Gnarls Barkley is not a person, but rather a collaboration, between rapper/vocalist Cee-Lo Green and DJ Danger Mouse. You couldn't ask for a better single than "Crazy." Its stuttering, opening line grabs you right away - "I remember when - I remember, I remember when I lost my mind/There was something so pleasant about that place." - and you're hooked into the momentum of a song punctuated by ghostly oooooh background vocals and the funk-soul wail of the chorus. ![]() Now Gnarls Barkley has taken it to the top of the British charts and it's starting to make an impression here. There's Patsy Cline's woozy, weepy ballad Seal's cool '90s hit Aerosmith's. Maybe pop music success just boils down to naming your song "Crazy." The title's history is a good one.
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