Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton) gave an interview to Billboard recently to discuss the upcoming sophomore effort from Gnarls Barkley, but didn’t say, or offer, very much. He apparently went back on a promise to play multiple songs from the new album, instead offering to play only one, from his personal iPod, and don’t look at it or ask any questions:
“I can play the song now or after the interview,” he says. “I’m not going to talk about the song, so it doesn’t matter when I play it. And I can’t tell you the name of the song, either.”
Urp. He also refuses to give a name or possible release date for the new album (the follow-up to last year’s surprise hit, the 1.3-million-selling St. Elsewhere). Idolator muses that perhaps he’s “cracking a little under the pressure,” but this kind of secrecy worked for “Crazy:” mp3s of the track began circulating in late 2005 without a title attached, an acapella of Cee-Lo’s vocal was never released or distributed (despite voracious demand from bootleggers eager to pull a Grey Album on Danger Mouse), and it took months for bloggers to track down the original sample. While “Crazy” was a once-in-a-lifetime slice of brilliance, perhaps Burton’s tactic of resisting the internet age’s mantra of “everything you wanted to know (and even things you didn’t want to know) all the time” is an astute strategy for hit-making. We’ll see whenever the new album comes out.
