Gnarls Barkley is a Grammy award-winning American
musical
group collaboration between multi-instrumentalist and producer Danger
Mouse (Brian Burton) from New York
, and
rapper/vocalist
Cee-Lo Green (Thomas Callaway), from
Atlanta
. Their first
album,
St. Elsewhere, was
released in 2006; it and their first hit, "
Crazy", were major commercial
successes, and were noted for their large sales by
download. The duo released their second
album,
The Odd
Couple, in March 2008.
History
Background
Cee-Lo
first entered the scene as part of the Atlanta hip hop group Goodie
Mob which had a large hand in the Dirty
South Movement of the 1990s. Cee-Lo left the group after
their third album in 1999 and started his solo career. That year he
sang on "Do You Like the Way" along with Lauryn Hill (of the Fugees
fame) on Santana's multi-platinum
Supernatural album.
Cee-Lo released two solo albums, one in 2002, and one in 2004.
Danger Mouse has produced for a number of hip-hop artists, and he
produced
Gorillaz' Grammy-winning album
Demon Days. He received national
attention for his
mash-up Grey Album, which blended the a capella
edition of
Jay-Z's
The Black Album with
samples from
The Beatles'
White Album.
They first met in 2003 when Thomas Callaway was on a tour for which
Danger Mouse happened to be the DJ. They began working together on
the songs that would become the
St. Elsewhere album; prior
to the release of that album they collaborated on the songs "What
You Sittin' On?" for
Lex Records in
2004, and "Benzie Box" from the
Dangerdoom album
The Mouse and the Mask in 2005.
They took the name Gnarls Barkley for their project as a duo.
Burton explains the collaboration's name came from friends, "making
up fictional celebrity names like
Prince Gnarls and
Bob Gnarley." When
Heavens'
Josiah Steinbrick came up with
Gnarls Barkley, Burton
wrote it down.According to a Billboard article: "Burton and Cee-Lo
have been cagey about what the name of the act means, and each live
performance is an opportunity to play dress-up as tennis players,
astronauts and chefs, among many other get-ups. The costuming
extends to photo shoots, as Burton and Cee-Lo would rather
impersonate characters from such films as "Back to the Future" or
"Wayne's World." Cee-Lo even appeared at the MTV Movie Awards in a
full Darth Vader outfit. (Burton was Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the rest
of the backing band and singers also wore
Star Wars
costumes.)"About Gnarls Barkley, Cee-Lo said in an interview: "That
is that electric industrial Euro soul, that’s what I call it…if I
can call it anything. It truly is shapeless and formless. My style
and my approach is still water, and it runs so deep. So, with that
project I got a chance to be a lil’ zany, of course a continuation
of eccentricity, abstract and vague, and all of those wonderful
things that make art exactly what it is. And that’s subject to
interpretation. As far as the artiste himself, it does cater to and
extend the legacy of Cee-Lo Green, and showcase the diversity and
range and intention of Cee-Lo Green. It is a great project that I’m
very, very proud of."
St. Elsewhere (2006–2007)
Downtown/Atlantic in the U.S. and Warners Bros. Records in the UK
signed the band after several songs including "
Crazy" were played for them by
Danger Mouse's management company
Waxploitation. "Crazy" was released as
their first
single on
April 3,
2006, preceded by its
release as digital download and 12"
vinyl
record single in March 2006. It gained some of its popularity
due to its use on primetime
BBC Radio 1
DJ
Zane Lowe's television advert, and it
was also made Record of the Week by
Ken
Bruce of
BBC Radio 2,
Scott Mills and
Jo
Whiley of BBC Radio 1 as well as being made 'Weekend Anthem' by
DJ Spoony and
Sara
Cox (also of Radio 1). "Crazy" is the first ever single to top
the
UK singles chart purely on
download sales as it was released online a week before it was
released as a CD single. It is also the first single to top the
UK Singles Chart for nine weeks
consecutively since 1994 when
Wet Wet
Wet's "
Love Is
All Around" was number one for 15 weeks (the last song to spend
exactly nine weeks on top was "Two Tribes" by
Frankie Goes to Hollywood in
1984). It has also equaled the
Queen
1975 classic "
Bohemian Rhapsody",
which also topped the UK singles chart for nine weeks. "Crazy" is
also the longest number-one on the
UK Official Download Chart with
its stay lasting eleven consecutive weeks. Gnarls Barkley announced
that as the record had spent its ninth week at number one, it was
to be deleted as a vinyl/CD listing from
May
28,
2006 so people will "remember the song
fondly and not get sick of it".
The group released their debut album,
St. Elsewhere, on
April 24,
2006 in the UK and on
May 9,
2006 in the U.S..
For their American television debut on
Late Night with Conan
O'Brien,
May 24,
2006, the band performed their smash hit, "Crazy". The
band performed along with
Christina
Aguilera,
AFI, and
Wolfmother at the
MTV Movie Awards 2006 on
June 8,
2006. They were dressed
as characters from the film series
Star
Wars:
Rebel Alliance pilots,
Imperial officers,
Stormtroopers,
Chewbacca,
Jango Fett,
Obi-Wan, with Cee-Lo singing as an unmasked
Darth Vader.
In October 2006,
Gnarls Barkley recorded a live session for Live from Abbey Road at Abbey Road
Studios
.
St. Elsewhere has been certified Platinum by the RIAA for
selling over 1,000,000 albums in the U.S.. A limited edition deluxe
package of
St. Elsewhere was released on
November 7,
2006. The CD+DVD
package includes a 92-page booklet, four music videos and bonus
songs from live performances.
From January until March 2007, they toured
with the Red Hot Chili Peppers
through the United States of America
. [382854]
They did a collaborative short film in both the Spring of 2006 and
2007 with the international TV series
Kung
Faux which airs heavily on
Channel
V around the world, and they also toured Australia in March and
April 2007 as part of the Channel V Festival.
The song "Go-Go Gadget Gospel" appears in the show
The Boondocks. It was sung by
Rev. Rollo Goodlove, who was voiced by Cee-Lo.
The Odd Couple (2008–present)
In early March, 2008, Gnarls's much anticipated sophomore release,
The Odd Couple, was
leaked over the internet prompting the duo to push the release date
up from
April 8. On
March 18,
2008, the album
became available via download on the
iTunes Music Store and
Amazon MP3. Hard copies of the album were
released on
March 25.
They appeared as the musical guest on the
April
12,
2008 episode of
NBC's
Saturday Night
Live. They were supposed to be in a
Digital Short parodying amateur music
videos according to the scrolled text but only appeared in the
singing performances of the live broadcast.
On November 11, 2008, they released an
EP,
Who's Gonna Save My Soul,
featuring four versions of the song which originally appeared on
The Odd Couple, along with a live version of "Neighbors"
and a previously unreleased song, "Mystery Man." A music video for
"Mystery Man" was directed by
Walter
Robot and premiered on
Yahoo!
Music.
Discography
Albums
| Year |
Album |
Chart positions |
Certifications |
| US |
UK |
AUS |
SWE |
| 2006 |
St.
Elsewhere
|
4 |
1 |
—kl |
— |
|
| 2008 |
The
Odd Couple
|
12 |
19 |
20 |
59 |
- RIAA (US): 235,000
- CRIA (CAN): —
- BPI (UK): —
|
| "—" denotes the album failed
to chart, not certified, or wasn't released |
|
Singles
- Notes
- A^ "Crazy" is currently certified 2×
Multi-Platinum by the RIAA.
- B^ "Who Cares?" and "Gone Daddy Gone"
were released as a double a-side single in the UK.
Awards
See also
References
-
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/genre/e3ie48bde3ff6c458aa55b73c763ddf4c84
-
http://www.thickonline.com/interviews/index.php?mod=cnt&act=cnt&id=1143&page=2
- 2007 Movie Awards Story | Justin, Luda To Appear At
Movie Awards - Show Story | Headlines | MTV
- CNN.com, February 11, 2007
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