Maybe I'm Crazy

Okay, so I’m slow. I only just caught on to Gnarls Barkley’s music. I’d heard and enjoyed “Crazy” before, but somehow my ears really opened up to it last week. I’ve been listening to them a lot and enjoying their videos, which are so clever and cool, on You Tube. I love their wonderful inkblot video.

I think Cee-Lo’s vocals are gorgeous; he has a smooth Motown-style falsetto that sounds warm and perfectly natural, not forced like some do, and Danger Mouse's production is delicious. Their rhythms are totally infectious and they’ve got a lovely gospel thing going on, too. Tasty. I love their sense of humor, too; Cee-Lo dressed like Darth Vader at the 2006 MTV Movie Awards, they dressed like droogs from “A Clockwork Orange” for other photos. My favorite is this spot-on "Napoleon Dynamite" send-up.

“Crazy” songs seem to work for me. I love Seal’s early hit “Crazy” (and his later acoustic version of it), and of course Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” is perfection. Willie Nelson made something like $50 for writing that song, and Patsy’s version went on to become the all-time top jukebox single. With reason. Willie’s versions are beautiful too, much softer, as if he’s accepted that his love is a hopeless cause. Patsy seems unconvinced that it was really so crazy to fall in love; Patsy's version of the song is so addictive because when she sings it, her torch still burns so brightly. Her head knows it’s crazy, but her heart still hopes. “The heart has reasons which reason knows nothing of.”

I'll write more on museums soon. In the meantime, I hope you're enjoying the holiday season and have kind, funny, open-hearted people to spend it with. I wish you peace and happiness, now and always.