Gnarls Barkley Reinvents Popular Music

The studio reinforces my hypothesis about perception vs. reality. You’d think it would be a flashy space with three secretaries wearing headsets in a mod waiting room where I’d be forced to sit awkwardly in a hanging-ball chair. Danger’s studio is actually nondescript—not quite dingy, but very worked-in, with computers and keyboards lining the walls. The down-home feel sets me at ease as the guys walk in and introduce themselves.

I’m immediately drawn to how laid back they seem. They give off a regular-guy vibe, even though nothing they create, either independently or as Gnarls Barkley, has any hint of regularity. They also both have an understandable “here-we-go” look on their face, the kind you get when you’re about to embark on a several-month-long publicity tour promoting your latest creation.

Cee-Lo wears a gold satin jacket, black jeans and an inch-thick diamond bracelet over his heavily tattooed arm. Danger Mouse is sporting a vintage grey blazer with a shirt underneath that says “Cassius Clay” in red cursive. I’m distracted by the fact that I could never pull off the blazer-over-shirt look, and by my bubbling excitement to ask not only about The Odd Couple, but also their obvious love of ’60s music and melancholy pop. And of course I’m also curious as to how they maintained any sort of artistic vision after birthing the monster that was their ubiquitous smash, “Crazy.” But instead of getting to any of that, I spend the first two minutes rambling about the following idea:

“I think The Odd Couple is the soundtrack for a tortured superhero.” They look at me and nod politely. For reasons still unknown to me, I continue: “Yeah, when I heard the album this morning, I felt like I was listening to a story about a very lonely superhero who raced from planet to planet looking for someone to love. At one point, I even saw myself as the superhero, and I was floating underwater looking up at the moon through the water, and I was feeling overwhelmed by the pressure of being who I was destined to be and the sadness that no-one could help me with that.”

Cee-Lo flashes a big smile, and Danger Mouse says, “That’s why we don’t like telling people what these records are about.”

It turns out that this is one of Gnarls Barkley’s main goals: to create a mysterious new sound that allows for individual interpretation. They accomplished this with their first album, St. Elsewhere, which crossed all boundaries by sampling Gianfranco Reverberi, covering the Violent Femmes and unleashing a pop masterpiece that could be heard everywhere from here to Estonia. Literally. It was #1 in Estonia. Number üks with a bülletään!