Home
My City — All AU
All Australia Adelaide Brisbane Canberra Darwin Gold Coast Hobart Melbourne Perth Sydney
What's On
Tonight All Gigs My Saved Festivals Set Times Venues Adelaide Brisbane Canberra Darwin Gold Coast Hobart Melbourne Perth Sydney Regional Towns Snap a Gig
Discover
Artists Songs Albums Genres Photos Photographers
Rankings & Countdowns
Atomic Top 20 Atomic Top 100 of 2025 Triple J Hottest 100 Musick.com.au Top 100 VOTE Adelaide's Sickest 100 4ZZZ Hot 100 FBi Radio RTRFM Three D Radio Top 93+7 Music Victoria Awards NT Music Awards WAM Song of the Year All Awards Lists Browse all countdowns Adelaide countdowns Brisbane countdowns Melbourne countdowns Perth countdowns Sydney countdowns Darwin countdowns Start a Countdown
Catalogue
Setlists The Archive Past Gigs Playlists Videos
Musickpedia News
Community
The Shed Pub Quiz
Sign In / Sign Up Industry Portal For artists, venues & media
Album artwork for Crazy by Gnarls Barkley

Crazy

by Gnarls Barkley

2006 · Rock · 2:57

About this song

  • "Crazy" is the first single from Gnarls Barkley, a musical collaboration between Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo, and is taken from their 2006 debut album St. Elsewhere. It became a top ten hit throughout Europe, North America and Oceania, in the first half of 2006, reaching number one of the single charts in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Canada, New Zealand and other countries. According to the Crazy Songfacts, this was the best selling single of 2006 in the UK, The song was leaked in late 2005, months before its regular release, and consequently received massive airplay on BBC Radio 1 in the United Kingdom, most notably by radio DJ Zane Lowe, who also used the song in TV ads for his show. When it was finally released in March 2006, it became the first single to top the UK charts on download sales alone. The song remained at number one in the UK Singles Chart for nine weeks (which no other song had achieved in over ten years, and was only surpassed by Rihanna's "Umbrella" in July 2007) before the band and their record company decided to remove the single from UK stores so people would "remember the song fondly and not get sick of it." In spite of this deletion, the song became the UK's best selling single of 2006. The song won a 2007 Grammy Award for Best Urban/Alternative Performance, and was also nominated as Record of the Year, which it lost to "Not Ready to Make Nice" by the Dixie Chicks. It was also nominated and further won a 2006 MTV Europe Music Award for Best Song. The song was also named the best song of 2006 by Rolling Stone and by the Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. Musically, "Crazy" was inspired by film scores of spaghetti Westerns, in particular by the works of Ennio Morricone, who is best known as the composer of Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy. The song samples a portion of "Last Man Standing" by the brothers Gian Franco and Gian Piero Reverberi from the 1968 spaghetti Western Django, Prepare a Coffin (Preparati la bara!) (The track is listed as "Nel cimitero di Tucson" on the film's soundtrack). In a 2006 interview with The lNew York Times, Danger Mouse said: "I brought in a song that I felt was a complete Ennio Morricone ripoff, but Cee-Lo and I started talking, and I somehow got off on this tangent about how people won't take an artist seriously unless they're insane." The song's lyrics, written by Cee-Lo, were inspired by a conversation he and Danger Mouse had in the studio with the instrumental playing on repeat: Danger Mouse was "caught up in thinking that people have to believe you're crazy to think you're an artist." After the conversation, Cee-Lo recorded the vocals for the song in just one take. . User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply. — lastfm
  • "Crazy" is the debut single of American soul duo Gnarls Barkley, taken from their debut studio album, St. Elsewhere (2006). It peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the charts in the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and several other countries. — wikipedia

Countdown appearances

More from Gnarls Barkley

Gone Daddy Gone artwork
Gone Daddy Gone
2006
[introduction]
2026
[outro]
2026
A Little Better artwork
A Little Better
2026
Accept It artwork
Accept It
2026
Blind Mary artwork
Blind Mary
2026
Boy Genius artwork
Boy Genius
2026
Charity Case artwork
Charity Case
2026

See all songs by Gnarls Barkley ›