Crazy About "Crazy"

Hot Soul Duo Gnarls Barkley Plays Houston

Mark Williams
Music Editor

Even if you lived under a rock in 2006, there's a better-than-average chance that you heard of Gnarls Barkley and their genre-busting radio smash hit "Crazy." Hey, even my mom's heard of them. "Crazy" made the Top 10 in more than 15 other countries and held the number 2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks. Sure, the numbers are impressive, but chart success is just the beginning of the story. "Crazy" is not just the pop audience's choice — it's the choice of pop musicians.

Almost immediately after the record's release, the first cover versions appeared, and now the "Crazy" cover phenomenon has become an epidemic. There have been rocked-up renditions by Jack White's new band the Raconteurs, emo rockers The Academy Is..., and wiggin’ pop star Nelly Furtado; and in the gruff-and-husky-aging-'80s-hit-makers-do-"Crazy" category, there's covers by Bryan Adams and Billy Idol. 

And this is just the beginning, if you throw in the dozens of DJ deconstructions, rap remixes, and mash-ups. There have been other pop hits in recent years that have gotten this kind of attention — Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time," Outkast's "Hey Ya!," Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" — but "Crazy" has reached levels of near frenzy. Even Gnarls Barkley themselves have gotten into the act, performing a heavily reworked ballad version of "Crazy" on “Late Night With Conan O'Brien.”

On musical grounds, the song's popularity makes perfect sense. "Crazy" is elegant, old-fashioned songwriting — a taut, melancholy melody that unfolds with impeccable logic over some basic chord changes and erupts into a heart-grabbing singalong chorus. Its transparency and simplicity, and the grandeur of that rising and tumbling chorus, gives the song a timeless feel. Like many of the best pop tunes, "Crazy" seems like it has always existed — like it wasn't written so much as yanked out of thin air. 

"Crazy" is not really disco or hip-hop or a pure pop song. In fact, "Crazy" seems to float outside genre altogether, which helps explain its wide appeal — most every musical constituency feels comfortable claiming it. "Crazy" has landed on the pop, R & B/hip-hop, adult contemporary and modern rock charts. No other hit in recent memory has crashed as many radio formats. 

Of course, weirdly unclassifiable dance-pop is the height of fashion — and Gnarls Barkley are nothing if not fashion-conscious. Band members Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse insist on performing and being photographed in wacky movie-inspired costumes, which makes Gnarls Barkley seem less like a regular old band than a kind of surreal stunt. It's an enviably hip shtick—little wonder that musicians have raced to cover "Crazy."

But that’s really nothing all that new: once upon a time, dozens of vocalists would rush to record the latest hit from a new Broadway musical, and many of those tunes have stayed with us, lodged in the American Songbook. What all the covers of "Crazy" mean is that it's destined to be a modern standard.

So what does it all mean? Is "Crazy" speaking to tortured artists, to angst-addled teens, to wounded lovers? Resonating with millions of self-identified "crazies" in an age of pop therapy and rampant psychopharmacology? Voicing widespread world-gone-mad sentiments in a time of global crisis? Who knows? And who really cares. It would seem that people just like a really good groove.

See Gnarls Barkley when they open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers on Wednesday (3/7) at the Toyota Center (1510 Polk St., Houston); call 1-866-4HOUTIX to grab up your tickets...

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