What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster… hit?
Crazy, by Gnarls Barkley (their 1st and only #1)
9 weeks, from 2nd April – 4th June 2006
And ‘Monster hit’ is the only way to describe this record. ‘Crazy’s nine-week run at the top of the charts is the longest for almost twelve years, since Wet Wet Wet’s ‘Love Is All Around’ did fifteen. It was the biggest selling single of 2006. It was the twelfth biggest of the decade (though if we discount charity/novelty/X-Factor songs it is the third biggest ‘normal’ song of the 2000s). And it was the first song in history to reach #1 on downloads alone.
Before we get into this record in detail, let us consider monster hits more carefully. We’re now well over fifty years into the singles chart, and in that time I’ve noticed that gigantic hits fall into two categories. (By gigantic, monster, mega – delete as you wish – hits we’re talking purely about the length of their run at number one, and I’m going to set a minimum of eight weeks, which means, for example, ‘Dancing Queen’ is a classic, but its six weeks on top mean it was not a mega, monster, or gigantic hit.)
These two categories are ‘obvious’, and ‘weird’. Obvious mega hits include ‘I Believe’ (18 weeks), or ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It For You’ (16 weeks), or the aforementioned Wet Wet Wet biggie, any of Ed Sheeran’s chart-humpers, and even the most recent record-breaker, ‘Rein Me In’. They’re obvious, often bland, crowd pleasers. In the weird category, though, we have the likes of ‘Stay’ (8 weeks), ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Two Tribes’ (both 9 weeks, though Bo Rap is really on 14 thanks to its 1991 rerelease), Drake’s ‘One Dance’ (15 long weeks), or the dreaded ‘Dance Monkey’ (11). Regular, catchy, three point five minute pop songs don’t seem to ever have the legs to become monster hits.
I’m not sure what the significance of this is, if there’s a significance to it at all. I’m also not sure what category Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ falls under. It isn’t your regular pop song. But it isn’t that weird either. It’s timeless, soulful; but also quite lo-fi, and lyrically quite challenging. It opens with the line I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind… and goes on to become a rumination on fame, and how artists are more respected when they are a little insane. My heroes had the heart, To live their life out on a limb, And all I remember, Is thinking, I wanna be like them… The ‘craziness’ theme extends to the Rorschach test inspired video.
Singer CeeLo’s voice has so much soul, and bite to it, truly making the song, and making it sound like its coming from a different species entirely to the singer of the previous #1, Ne-Yo (sorry Ne-Yo, you were just the closest example…) The rest of the song is relatively simple, if off-kilter: a neo-soul beat, strings, and a sample of ‘Last Men Standing’ from the soundtrack to 1968 Western ‘Django, Prepare a Coffin’. The more I write, the more I’m leaning towards putting this in the ‘weird’ column…
For such a monster hit, I don’t think ‘Crazy’ gets the airplay it deserves twenty years on, and has slipped from the public conscience in the meantime. Gnarls Barkley themselves deleted the song from music stores, not wanting people to get sick of their song, meaning that it disappeared from the charts two weeks after being knocked off #1, perhaps explaining how people forgot about it so quickly.
This completed an odd chart run, which began with the song making number one on downloads alone. In 2006 a new rule had been introduced, allowing songs to chart via downloads a week before their physical release (at this point, songs still needed a physical release to be eligible for the chart). Most big hits charted low down in the Top 40 on downloads before leaping to the top the following week – in the second half of 2006 nine different number ones will experience this week-two bounce – but ‘Crazy’ was so popular, and so anticipated, that it went straight in at the top.
Gnarls Barkley were singer CeeLo Green and producer Danger Mouse. Both had pedigree: Green had worked with Lauryn Hill and Santana, while Danger Mouse had produced for Gorillaz, and had released the well-received ‘Grey Album’, a mash-up of Jay-Z’s ‘Black’ and The Beatles’ ‘White’ albums. ‘Crazy’ was their first hit, a real out-of-nowhere, lightning in a bottle moment, that the duo would never quite manage to capture again (follow-up ‘Smiley Faces’ made #10, and was their only other Top 20 hit). They went their separate ways again in 2008 – CeeLo’s solo career will bring him another fine chart-topper – before releasing their long-touted third and final album ‘Atlanta’ earlier this year.
