...Just Like Me

We pay psychiatrists hundreds of dollars an hour. We shovel-feed our children anti-depressant drugs by the mouthful. Mental problems sit at the forefront of our minds (no pun intended). Gnarls Barkley’s 2006 album St. Elsewhere dives into the depths of our thought process, emerging with a striking look at how our minds work and the up-and-down nature of our personalities. The album’s ever-changing mood and sound remind us that our consciousness is in a constant state of flux, while the album’s lyrics explore a broad range of mental issues. A catchy beat may have made the second song, “Crazy,” one of the most popular songs of the year, but when one scratches the surface a bit he finds more than a made-for-radio album.

Click. Whrrrrr... The album begins with the sound of an old reel-to-reel projector turning on. This cinematic effect alerts the listener that he is entering some kind of unreality where things may not be exactly as they seem. One of the very first defense mechanisms against mental anguish is the simple escape from reality—not coincidently, St. Elsewhere opens by denying reality. And just like those first few moments of oblivious bliss, “Go Go Gadget Gospel,” the opening song, feels ready to fly. “I’m well on my way / I’m almost everything / and this is my day / make me wanna sing,” croons singer Cee-Lo. The song uses a rapid tempo, energetic horns, and soulful lyrics that bleed the “freedom in Hi Fidelity” of which the song speaks. Reality has been successfully shunned, and the world seems bright...

For two minutes and nineteen seconds (the length of “Gospel”), at least. We can’t lie to ourselves forever, keeping the bad thoughts out, and neither can Gnarls Barkley. “Gospel” abruptly ends with a rapid distortion of the music, immediately followed by reality breaking through the artificial mental wall: the four pounding first beats of “Crazy,” followed by the singer’s explanation of his mental breakdown. Gone are the upbeat horns and optimistic vocals. In their place, “Crazy” gives us a minimalist guitar rhythm backed up by a humming choir. An audible wind blows during the chorus, and Cee-Lo asks, “Does that make me crazy?” before answering himself: “possibly." The singer deals with self-doubt created by hero-worship, something we are all guilty of from time to time. “All I remember is thinking / I want to be like them,” he reminisces. Not being able to measure up to his image of perfection cripples his personality. He even doubts whether or not he is actually crazy. Interestingly enough, the singer does not seem distraught by this realization of insanity. Even though his mental defenses on the first track have failed, he feels oddly comfortable about his new situation: “I remember when I lost my mind—there was something so pleasant about that place.” We tend to hide our mental problems, and consider them taboo. St. Elsewhere smashes this convention. No longer lying to himself, the singer is ready to confront his issues. As in reality, however, things are about to get worse before they get better.

The singer withdraws inward in an attempt to overcome his issues. The third (and album-titling) song, “St. Elsewhere,” follows his journey to a deserted island of isolation. The song employs a sound similar to “Crazy,” but at a slower pace. Now alone and left to fight his demons, the singer finds himself wandering without any idea what to do. Loneliness consumes him: “Would it be so hard for you to come and visit me here?” Still dealing with residual issues from whatever traumatic event in the past, the singer finds himself unable to overcome his desire for companionship and a return to the way things were. We cling to the past, because we worry that it is all we have. The future is uncertain. This is the key moment in his journey—one we all have to deal with. Instead of taking the easy path, giving up on his issues and accepting things the way they are, he chooses to fight on. This decision sets the stage for the middle section of the album, where the singer finally begins to come to grips with his own mind.

The issues he confronts (well, at least, most of them) are painfully relatable. One of the reasons St. Elsewhere works so well is its willingness to bare its soul and let us in. Inside, nearly everyone can find something meaningful to his/her own experience--specifically, the bulk of the album deals almost entirely with self-loathing. “The Boogie Monster” is, first and foremost, creepy. Nefarious laughter rules the day as the singer realizes that he cannot sleep. To add to the horror, the singer invokes the name of the classic horror villain, Dracula. There are monsters afoot, in his closet and under his bed, and “it won’t let [him] get any sleep.” Again, the singer instinctively tries to hide from the problem. But only when he works up the courage to stare his demon in the face can he realize the true issue: “I used to wonder why he looked familiar / And then I realized it was a mirror.” He finally realizes that he is his own problem, and with that revelation out of the way he can move on to other issues.

After confronting his obsessive-compulsive disorder in “Feng Shui,” the singer moves on to (arguably) his most pressing issue: suicide. “Just A Thought” (which doubles as the album’s best song) takes the singer to the brink, where he must finally make the ultimate choice: live or die, fight on or give up. As he says himself, the singer only wants peace and quiet, “wouldn’t have to have one worldly possession." Death looks more and more attractive. Teetering on the edge of failure, he looks out at the world and decides that even though “it’s not just good, it’s great depression / when I was lost I even found myself / looking in the gun’s direction," life may be worth living after all, as we learn in the final line of the song: “But I’m fine." As doomed as we may feel, the singer wants us to remember that there is a way out other than suicide.

With this darkest of moments finally in the past, the musical tone of St. Elsewhere begins to lighten. Problems persist, but they no longer seem insurmountable. “Transformer,” the most upbeat song since “Gospel,” sees the singer confronting schizophrenia, and the singer is remarkably candid and at ease with his drug issues in “Online.” These songs demonstrate the kind of self-comfort that can only come from a process as painful as the introspection that he just experienced. It may sound cliché, but often we really do have to accept the painful parts of life in order to move past them. With underlying issues finally dealt with, we become more comfortable with our quirks--even when they are extreme as the bizarre “Necromancer.” As the pun-ny name implies, it is a necrophilia song--far from a socially acceptable topic. But now the singer is comfortable in his own skin--he accepts his necrophilia as part of himself and does not pretend to hide it. The self-doubting hero-worship of “Crazy” has passed, and he no longer wants to “be like them,” but to be himself. Only an incredibly self-confident person could possibly be as candid when it comes to a subject so strange and taboo—a remarkable improvement from the singer’s state of mind in the early songs.

As the album ends with the innocent “The Last Time” that simply asks “When was the last time you danced?”, we can step back and see how far the singer has come. The projector reaches the end of its film, and we hear it slow to a stop. Journey complete, the singer is finally ready to move on with his life, no medication required. In the end, there is no replacement for self-honesty, as painful as it might be (although a catchy beat helps to ease the process).