In the Mood for Hating: A Field Guide to Blogosphere Hype

Hey, are you totally fucking sick of hearing about Gnarls Barkley yet? I sure am.

If you read music blogs at all, you know it's been impossible to avoid hearing about this band (or 'band'), weeks and months before any actual record of theirs came out. Most of the initial hype centered around DJ Dangermouse doing a 'soul' record, which made me think, okay, hype aside that might be all right. His "Gray Album" was good, and "Dangerdoom" was okay. I never really had an opinion on Cee-lo, the singer, other than to think that his old band, Goodie Mob, always kinda blew--but I realize I'm prejudiced because I think that all rap from the South inherently sucks grits.

Then their big single, "Crazy", got major press in the UK for going #1 just on internet downloads, and apparently now there's some peculiarly English mass-hysteria for this band? (An alternate title for this post was: The UK Has Gone Fucking Insane.)

Unfortunately, now that I've actually heard the record, I can safely say it's as soulful as a ziplock baggie full of dog farts. Really the most startling thing about it is that it's so hideously bland, so preternaturally underwhelming. It's not even like I hate this record. How can you? There's nothing there to hate. But that doesn't stop eight million bloggers from posting about it like it's the second coming.

CubikMusik and Clever Titles Are So Last Summer are just two of the unnumbered legions of blogs (just this week alone!) who posted GB's Top-of-the-Pops smash "Crazy" (or here). CubikMusik describes this slab of punishing mediocrity as a "classic". CTASLS calls it the "craziest psychadelic soul jam that Prince couldn't even come up with". Both are smoking crack rock.

The Laws Have Changed posted GB's cover of that Violent Femmes song, "Gone Daddy Gone". And even if not too many other blogs have posted it, they all seem to agree it's doubleplus awesome that GB picked that song. Hello! It's a boring cover of a song that really isn't any good in the first place!

Silence is a Rhythm Too posted this track, "The Last Time", and at least admits that the hype on this group is totally absurd. In case you're wondering, this song blows too.

Bushwick is Beautiful (which has an interesting title, but that's about it) calls Gnarls Barkley "the Outkast of 2006", which pretty much sums up why I was sick of them before I ever heard a single song. He does, to be fair, post "Smiley Faces", the sole song on the album that is even remotely catchy.