doctorvee

According to this article on Digital Spy, Gnarls Barkley’s irrepresible record-breaking single, Crazy, has been deleted because they are fed up with it.

I can understand what they mean. There can’t be a single person in the country who hasn’t heard this song now. I guess when a single has been at number 1 for longer than any other single since ‘Love is All Around’, you really know it’s time to pull the plug. I saw them on Popworld* at the weekend playing quite a different version of it. It was a really groovy slow version, much better than the original. I would totally buy the album if that version was on it!

But when I first heard the song I was quite disappointed. The first time I ever heard of it was when a friend told me that Danger Mouse was going to become the first person to reach number 1 on the strength of downloads only. And my reaction was just, “QTF new Danger Mouse material?!?”

Prior to Gnarls Barkley, Danger Mouse was probably most famous for the absolutely immese ‘Grey Album‘. Having heard that it was hard to resist investigating his other releases.

His collaboration with Jemini, ‘Ghetto Pop Life‘, is my personal favourite of his, while ‘The Mouse and the Mask‘ by Danger Doom is also excellent, despite the fact that so many references go straight over the head of somebody who’s never seen Adult Swim before (i.e. me). Apparently follow-up albums for both DM & Jemini and Danger Doom are both in the pipeline, which is good news.

‘Demon Days‘ wasn’t quite on the same level, but there were still some absolutely cracking tracks, and the last couple of tracks made a great ending to the album.

So given this good track record, I was excited to hear what Danger Mouse would come up with in this new project. But when I heard ‘Crazy’ I was pretty underwhelmed. My brother couldn’t believe it was Danger Mouse either. It just seemed so bland for Danger Mouse. I could hear that it was Danger Mouse — it wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the last Gorillaz album — but it just wasn’t a very interesting song.

Over time, though, it has grown on me, but I still haven’t opted to buy the album. I have heard some pretty mixed reviews for it. Some people say that ‘Crazy’ is boring but the rest of the album is quite good. Others say that ‘Crazy’ is great but the rest of the album is poor.

I wonder if there is a UK / America divide at work here. Maybe people in the UK think of it as a chart song first and foremost — and not the sort of thing that you even need to buy, because you hear it all over the place anyway. In the US, where ‘Crazy’ has not had anything like the impact it has in the UK, it is probably seen more as another Danger Mouse / Cee-Lo project, and the music is more likely to be judged on its merits alone.

I guess I will buy the album if the next singles (if there are any) are good. That’s what I did with ‘Speakerboxxx / The Love Below‘, which ended up being an excellent album.

* While I’m on the subject of Popworld I may as well write what I think about the new series, following on from my post mourning the loss of Simon and Miquita.

The new series has, thankfully, tried to retain its humorous edge. But that makes it all the more strange that they have chosen that lump of uselessness Alex Zane to present it. He is not even a quarter as funny as he thinks he is. In fact, if anything, Alexa Chung has ended up being the funny one. She has come up with some brilliant lines:

Duncan from Blue: When I was in Blue all of the music was done using computers…
Alexa: Ah cool, electro!