Everybody's Brother (22 page)

Bruno and Phil’s idea for a song that literally said “Fuck You” to the listener spoke to my bad attitude. But somehow there was some kind of crazy sweetness to it. It felt like the whole world was singing along—whether it was Gwyneth Paltrow singing “Forget You” on
Glee
or appearing with me and some Muppets on the Grammy Awards. Hell, I know I will never forget seeing William Shatner doing “Fuck You” on George Lopez’s talk show. Captain Kirk covering our dirty little ditty on national TV—how freaking cool is that? And now there’s even a sweet young girl with a ukelele sitting in her messy bedroom and singing “Fuck You” on YouTube. And at last count, almost half a million people have watched it.

If “Fuck You” had bombed, no one would argue over it. But instead, there was a little bit of a credit grab because I think everybody was so proud of the song’s success.

People often misunderstand what songwriting credits mean—and sometimes there are misunderstandings among co-writers too. So because there has been some confusion here, let me be clear here once and for all—I was definitely one of the writers of “Fuck You,” and I’m fucking proud of it. When you produce music, you in a sense write it too, and the production of “Fuck You” is something Bruno deserves a lot of credit for—and the track sounded great. But just for the record, Phil Lawrence and I wrote most of the lyrics to “Fuck You,” with Bruno throwing in lines as we thought out loud.

I’m trying to describe this diplomatically because originally I wasn’t aware there was a tug-of-war over this song. But then I read interviews in which the guys seemed to be saying that they wrote the song, and I’m like goddamn, why would you say that? I don’t know if someone told Bruno to claim that he wrote it for me to cause a little controversy and generate some press. But I know that he’s a good guy and I don’t think that reflects who he really is. In the end, there was no reason to take sides because we all shared this big victory together.

After bringing all that up about him, I want to give Bruno a compliment and say he is probably the best songwriter, singer, and producer of the young generation right now. He’s got a great voice and amazing singles and people love him. Now, since I am eight years his senior, let’s see where he is in another decade. I would not bet against him.

However we pulled it off, the fact is that “Fuck You”
is a brilliant record, and it’s cool and even a little mind-blowing to have something that’s an extension of you have such an impact. First of all, it’s very flattering, humbling, and empowering too. For all the frustrations of this business and this life, hitting everyone like that for a moment in time gives you an awful lot of incentive to go on.

As soon as the single “Fuck You” hit big in August and September 2010, Atlantic could hardly wait to release
The Lady Killer
album in November.

Making
The Lady Killer
had been a whole other trip. Gnarls Barkley was a more cerebral and an unstable element—truly crazy stuff. This process was more stable and purposeful. My idea was that I would not so much make an album as a movie. From the title to the music to the packaging, I wanted to create my own musical spy film, something truly cinematic with edge and elegance that was inspired the great lady-killers of the past, from James Bond to Serge Gainsbourg to Barry White. That’s the good thing for me—lady-killers come in all sizes and colors and ages. It’s not about race or being another pretty face—it’s about substance and style. Fortunately, for me and for all the ladies out there, I just so happen to have extra servings of both. Like James Bond, I was a ladies’ man on a mission—a journey that took me through songs like “Bright Lights Bigger City” and “It’s OK.”

I can be my own toughest critic, and I will honestly
tell you that I am not sure that I ever got my “movie”
The Lady Killer
exactly right—maybe I’ll do another director’s cut one of these days. Generally I don’t go out of my way to read reviews, but when I hear they’re really good, I will make a happy exception. One review that I particularly enjoyed ran in
Rolling Stone
, in which Jody Rosen began his review like this:

How can you not love CeeLo? He’s a virtuoso rapper who has one of pop’s most unique singing voices. He’s a self-proclaimed lady-killer who’s roughly as tall as a mini-refrigerator and as broad as a Hummer. He wears pink suits. He put a song called “Fuck You” in the Top 20. He is, in other words, an original: a showman with a penchant for scrambling a variety of sounds—rock, soul, hip-hop, spaghetti-Western soundtracks—into something deliciously strange. That weirdness makes CeeLo’s first album since Gnarls Barkley blew up one of the most engrossing records of 2010.

How can you not love CeeLo? Thinking about it, that’s the ultimate question I have been asking all of my mutant life.

I RECOGNIZE THE CHAIR

From the start, I felt right at home on
The Voice.

Here I am in a Misfits T-shirt during Season One.

Photo by Lewis Jacobs/NBC via Getty Images

I
n most every supernatural and epic journey, the hero survives his trials of fire and darkness and returns to the land of the living with new knowledge to share with the world. In my particular fable, the sweet elixir that I had gained from my trials and tribulations and triumphs was an understanding of how music is made and what it takes to be true to yourself and your vision as an artist. And what better way to share this knowledge than to coach a group of talented young singers, and do it in front of something like 12 million viewers each week?

I knew going in that
The Voice
had the potential to make some history, but I had no idea of the awesome impact the show would have on the fortunes of our network home NBC, on the world of TV generally—and more specifically on me and my crazy career. In retrospect, I think it is quite amazing that this all has happened on a show that’s called
The Voice
.

If you remember, this thick slice of the high life called Lo that I have been serving up here began with a much younger and less confident version of me hearing some amazing voices in my head—voices that filled the void left
by a father who could not be there. Through the enduring mystery of music, I heard those powerful and expressive voices of men who sang me all the lessons that my own father could not be around to teach me. As in some forgotten old Bible story set in the Dirty South, those voices in my head drove me to do things that I otherwise might never have dared. I thank God—and any other deities involved—that those beautiful voices ultimately won out over the voices around me telling me that my life didn’t matter—that I was too strange, too odd looking, too flawed to ever win big. Instead, I listened to enough of those encouraging musical voices in my head and took enough of their lessons to heart that eventually I found my own voice. And with a little luck—or in my mind precisely according to plan—my own voice is now being heard all around this world. Against some long odds and despite people who told me I was an underdog who was just going to get whipped by life, my voice has connected with millions of people and traveled the world through musical statements like “Crazy” and “Fuck You.”

On some level, I always felt fated to share my unique voice with the world, but sharing my face with the general public was a whole other thing. One of the amazing things about the past few years has been seeing my now-famous face plastered all over television and anywhere else people are looking. Part of me loves it. Part of me hates it. On the plus side of the fame equation, I can’t help thinking about the possibility that somewhere out there, some young kid having a hard time or just feeling lonely is seeing me on
The Voice
and hearing my words of encouragement and feeling them stir something inside him or her. And just as I did back when I was watching television for hours by myself growing up, that theoretical kid out there may be staring at me on the TV screen to try and figure out how to speak and how to behave. That kid might not have a dad, or might be an orphan, or just not feel loved or understood. I believe there are lots of misfits out there watching and looking for any helpful clues about this journey called life. The fact that my own crazy journey has taken me all the way from hearing voices in my head to hearing, judging, and nurturing voices for a living on
The Voice
is enough to leave me speechless—almost.

The big idea of putting me in one of those famous chairs on
The Voice
came from one of the biggest names in TV. Mark Burnett had already brought the world
Survivor
, and in show biz terms, who is more of a survivor than me? Okay, I may not have eaten a lot of bugs in my time, but I sure as hell have eaten my share of shit in the music business—and who’s really to say which is more dangerous to your health?