Then there’s the bunch of times Cee-lo said “We just fucking” or “We’re gonna fuck around, let’s do it.” It’s weird to see an artist so anxiously denying ownership of his own songs, or at least renouncing responsibility for them by throwing his arms up with a shrug and a smile. “Here’s a trifle!” as Pitchfork’s Sean Fennessey says. Even the quieter rendition of “Transformer” — with lines like “I can transform” and “I’m just being myself” — felt like Cee-Lo’s thinly veiled navel-gazing self-defense against people (rap fans) saying he jumped ship on hip-hop because, it seems, you just don’t do that sort of thing. Gnarls insist they don’t take the project seriously, there’s no more than meets the eye, they’re just two sweet dudes cutting some tracks for fun or whatever. But after the show, I wondered if there isn’t more. I don’t mean there’s some get-rich-quick conspiracy involved here with CL/DM at the helm — there are much better ways to make money than the pop music. But I do mean to say the two have found themselves to be — or have been forced into becoming — a fascinating instance where the publicists and publicity engines and all the mechanisms of the business of music are more artistic than the music itself. The leaked untitled tracks, the MySpace mobilization, the grassroots blog hype, the bizarre press photos — they all contribute to the façade of “totally fun pop, no bad intentions, not too serious and it hits the spot.” It’s a perfect marketing campaign, a true work of art.
People complain about buzz, ever suspicious someone or somebody is manipulating Old Miss Music. Now after so much Gnarls hype, people complain that Barkley writers (like yours truly) aren’t meeting the music head-on enough, that we’re too caught up in the details of the phenomenon at the expense of the music, like the pop songs about paranoia, as if every pop song ever written weren’t about paranoia in some way or another. Maybe we’re looking for gold (and platinum) in the wrong places. But when it’s time to fill out Top 10 lists at the end of the year, my #1 album won’t be Gnarls — just Gnarls’s publicist.
P. Diddy showed up at the show; so did T.I. and this one guy who looked like a hybrid Nitsuh Abebe/Albert Einstein. They weren’t at Webster to hear Cee-lo sing about how he likes railing corpses. They came to see Cee-lo ask “You guys having fun?” and a bunch of white people throw up their guns, then 30 seconds later watch Cee-lo ask “When’s the last time you guys had this much fun?” Not a single person in the room seemed to know that the answer was 30 seconds ago.
On the Web
Gnarls Barkley: //www.gnarlsbarkley.com/