The Odd Couple (Album)

chronology
The odd couple
Studio album by Gnarls Barkley
Publication ; (s)	April 4, 2008
Label (s)	Warner Music Group
Genre (s)	Alternative , hip-hop , soul
Title (number)	13
running time	39:11 min
production	DJ Danger Mouse

The Odd Couple is the second music album by the alternative duo Gnarls Barkley . It was released in March 2008 in Germany and is named after the comedy film Ein seltsames Paar .

About the album

After The Odd Couple was leaked at the beginning of March 2008 , the release originally planned for April was postponed by two weeks. The album was available digitally a week earlier. In April Gnarls Barkley released the album as an instrumental version for free on the Internet, but backwards under the title elpuoC ddO ehT .

Like its predecessor St. Elsewhere , The Odd Couple is very gloomy in terms of content; the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung describes Cee-Lo Green's texts as “ pessimistic - misanthropic ” and characterized by “ uncertainty, defenselessness and self-doubt ”. In “Would Be Killer” he takes on the role of a potential gunman , in “Whatever” that of a frustrated teenager , “Neighbors” is about the superficial envy of his neighbor. The contents of “Going On” or “Blind Mary”, in which Cee-Lo describes the love for a blind woman who does not judge him by his appearance, are more positive. Musically, The Odd Couple is also largely melancholic to depressive and “ has definitely more to do with big beat and, in its quieter moments, with trip-hop than with the aesthetics of contemporary North American hip-hop and R&B . “Again, both samples and musical instruments were integrated and the playing time was mostly kept short.

Singles

The lead single for The Odd Couple was the song "Run (I'm a Natural Disaster)", which appeared on the Internet in January 2008. "Run" booked its highest chart position in Bulgaria at number 26, in England the song landed at number 32. The music video in which Justin Timberlake made a cameo was allowed in Great Britain due to an increased risk of epilepsy due to flowing geometric shapes and Lines do not initially broadcast. The effects were subsequently mitigated. The video won two MTV Video Music Awards .

Track list
Charity case Who's gonna save my soul Going on Run (I'm a Natural Disaster) Would be killer Open Book Whatever Surprise No time soon She knows Blind Mary Neighbors A little better

The other singles “Going On” and “Who's Gonna Save My Soul” went largely unnoticed commercially. “Going On” made it into the charts in Canada (52nd place) and the USA (88th place). The video for "Who's Gonna Save My Soul" is for the 2009 Grammy Awards as Best Music Video Short nominated.

reception

Reviews

The Odd Couple was largely received positively, but worse than St. Elsewhere . It has a metascore of 76 points.

For the reviewer of the e-zine laut.de , a comparison with elevator music is an obvious one . The music is referred to as "undulating noise" and the album is rated two out of five points. Only the faster songs “Going On” and “Run” are positively highlighted.

" The Odd Couple is even doomier [than" Crazy "] - it's like the laugh from" Crazy "stretched out into a whole album of paranoid bad weed vibes. Thanks to Danger Mouse, the album has the always unpredictable sonic brilliance of their first collaboration, St. Elsewhere , even when the songwriting misses the mark. They don't try for any crowd-pleasing pop energy - instead, Danger Mouse filters Cee-Lo's gospel -trained voice through alien studio effects over druggy, distorted funk loops for the kind of sound they called " trip-Hop " back in the Nineties. [...] This time, Gnarls don't want anybody to miss how bummed out they are. "

- Rolling Stone (3.5 out of 5 points)

The All Music Guide criticizes the album's lack of innovation , both musically and lyrically, Gnarls Barkley mostly repeats himself. He awards three and a half out of five points to The Odd Couple .

"[...] it's exactly like St. Elsewhere , and fails to reveal a single new thing. All the hallmarks of a follow-up record are here - similar sounds and themes, for sure, but also a clear lack of innovation, lyrical and production touches that have since become clichés , and more than just a few passages that will prompt a severe case of listener déjà vu . "