Closing out new music week…
(All three days of it. And what did you pay to get in here?)
Unless you waste all day on pop culture blogs, you may not have heard of overnight sensations Gnarls Barkley yet. The duo is made up of Cee-Lo Green (of the Goodie Mob) and DJ Danger Mouse. Did you know that Cee-Lo wrote the hit “Don’t Cha” for The Pussycat Dolls? (You’ve heard it in that Heineken Light commercial: “Don’t cha you wish your girlfriend was fun like me?”)
The Gnarls Barkley debut single “Crazy” made history as being the first song to reach the top of the UK music charts based solely on download sales. It’s been #1 for eight weeks now.
It’s a great song, combining soul with that peculiar brand of pop that was practiced by British bands in the Sixties. (I’m thinking of, I don’t know, The Marmalade or The Move.)
Anyway, here’s a live version of “Crazy” from a month ago, performed on the venerable programme Top of the Pops. The tempo is slowed down on this version and the beat is more subdued. Plus, since it’s a Friday and I haven’t posted a mash-up in six weeks, here’s team9‘s combo of “Crazy” with Prince’s “Sign ‘O’ the Times.”
You can get the Gnarls Barkley album St. Elsewhere here.
Amusingly, the duo has had a series of promotional photos shot of them as characters from movies: Wayne’s World, A Clockwork Orange, Napoleon Dynamite, The Big Lebowski, and so on. See them on their MySpace photo page.
Gnarls Barkley – Crazy (live)
team9 – Crazy Times