matt’s music blog

In contrast to Surprise, this track is all about the vocals and lyrics, and the instruments play a strictly supporting role.  The percussion and bassline are both catchy, but somehow Cee-Lo’s voice is the most important player. This is firmly established as soon as the song starts – the vocalizing in the beginning somehow says, “listen, I have something to tell you.” I think the chords help with this – it’s a familiar and comfortable progression, making it easy to take for granted while you listen to the words.

She’s my friend she doesn’t judge me.
She has no idea I’m ugly.
So I have absolutely nothing to hide,
because I’m so much prettier inside.

The distorted effect on the vocals somehow makes it seem really earnest, as though he were singing as hard as he could because he wants to express how much he loves her.  The sentiment is simple: she can’t see, so she doesn’t see his flaws, she only knows who he is as a person, and he finds that attractive. Is it about a blind girl that he loves, or about marijuana? It could go either way, I guess, although weed seems like more of a stretch. Either way, this is an expertly constructed song.

As with most Gnarls Barkley tracks (and the majority of Dangermouse-produced material in general), ‘Surprise’ features incredibly catchy bass and percussion that is hard not to bob your head to. The vocalizing in the beginning and sort of oldies-sounding instrumentation does a great job of grabbing your attention, sort of like an announcement that something important is about to happen. The extra little bit of triangle and woodblock in there is like a cherry on the top of a icecream sunday, and the ragged clapping gives you a subconcious cue that other people are enjoying themselves and you should be too.

Cee-Lo’s voice weaves in and out of the instruments, not too overbearing or understated – it almost sounds like he ran across a backing track that he liked and improvised the song on a whim (not entirely unheard of, apparently).  However, in this case I’m hardly paying any attention to the lyrics, which are well-written and full of good word choices, but in the face of the expert instrumentation (which includes the vocals) they’re just not important.