I have fallen hopelessly in love with the musical stylings of Cee Lo Green.
I absolutely have to give credit to his new TV show "The Voice," which I guess is on NBC. Spike and I watched the rerun of the first episode over the weekend on E!. I never, ever watch that channel for any reason, but it was the only place that had that show, and we were sort of interested in it. (It's actually a pretty good show - the auditions take place with the team leaders [Adam Levine from Maroon 5, Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green and Blake Shelton] turned around with their backs to the stage. They listen to the singer and then if they decide they want that voice on their team, they hit a button that swivels their chair around so they can see the performer. The performer then gets to choose which turned-around artist they want for a mentor. Each artist gets a team of eight people, and they themselves are competing against the other artists for top slot. It's pretty awesome.) Anyway, I had heard a clip of his big hit "Fuck You" (or "Forget You" if you're terrestrial radio and/or Wal*Mart) awhile ago and tried to make a mental note about it, but my mental notepad is more like a dry-erase board these days, so I forgot. Until yesterday, when we watched "The Voice." I remembered, and downloaded his entire The Lady Killer album.
There are several points to make here. First, I am the whitest white girl that ever lived. I turn bright pink even without sun - just with application of a little heat. (This is extremely inconvenient in Texas.) The only soul I have is the one on the bottom of my shoe. I can sing with some soul, but I just do not possess any in my everyday life.
Having said that, I come to my second point: I am an avid, entrenched fan of early R&B. I love early R&B so very, very much. I always have, and I always will. Unlike many people who like that style, it's not homogenous to me. I have favorite artists, and favorite eras, and favorite eras of artists. Chief among them are The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson and Al Green. They move me. Their voices move me. Their grooves move me. I love this shit.
Cee Lo Green is just like this shit. He is fucking amazing.
The orchestrations, with the horns and the back-up singers and even the freaking xylophone is such a throwback to earlier times. And tracks on that album hark back to the 1960s and the 1970s, in separate tracks. This music is so great, I want to rub it into my skin. I want to wear it like a too-tight t-shirt to inappropriate places, like church. I love this music.
This is not to say that all the tracks are equally good - they're not. Some are weaker than others. But even the weak tracks kick the collective ass of current popular music in such a fashion that I'm not sure I'm allowed to watch. It's that brutal.
The long and the short of it is: I don't care if you like Motown or not. Buy this damn album. It is musical genius.
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