BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #97: Who's Gonna Save My Soul by Gnarls Barkley

Last week, I started writing something regarding the fact that decreased impact of terrestrial radio airplay has diluted the impact of the "one hit wonder" in relation to past decades.  And yet I could never quite string together a cohesive narrative, primarily because the term "hit" at this point seems particularly difficult to qualify.  It was much easier to chart a hit when radio airplay held higher cultural significance, or when MTV in fact played a steady rotation of videos, launching certain bands to buzzworthy status before they disappeared into the ether, never to be heard from again, unless they were included on embarrassing mixtape challenges.

But alas, nobody has informed Billboard magazine of the downturn affecting one hit wonders.  They rolled out their top 40 of the decade today, and personally I find Daniel Powter's American Idol-fueled victory over James Blunt a significant upset. 

While I always enjoy the occasional remembrance of Crazy Town, Billboard's #7 pick seems out of place.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #5: Crazy by Gnarls Barkley

This doesn't sound like a song someone wrote.  It sounds like something found in a time capsule, years after it was systematically created in a lab, and now we are hearing something that contains no obvious influence of the society in which it was created.  It comes from no discernible musical era, sounding like something that would seamlessly fit in with any genre of pop music that has existed within the last fifty years.  Likewise it refuses to be pigeonholed into any particular genre.  I mean the guy from Goodie Mob is singing over a spaghetti western sample, for God's sake.  This is a song that I can't imagine ever aging, specifically because it appears to be without age.  It just seems like something that has always been around, but we just didn't know about it.