Cee-Lo Green: "Fuck You" (Video)

I disagree. This son is one of the poppiest things Cee-Lo's done this side of Gnarls Barkley -- to its betterment. We could all use a little Jackson 5-influenced jam. What else is summer for?

Wow. This write-up is Pitchfork worthy. The first sentence alone is a masterpiece. "The summer's most viral song (but not best, not by a long shot)" Translation: "the fact that lots of people not nearly as cool as I am like this song means that it can't possibly be as good as people think it is (and don't you dare suggest otherwise, else you won't be permitted to hang out with the cool kids)." Let's be honest, for real: this is a brilliantly crafted pop song that mixes the sacred (gospel/soul arrangement) and profane (in this case, actual profanity), which is very much in the tradition of classic R&B. If the fact that something this good is being enjoyed by too many people makes you uncomfortable... I feel sorry for you.

I've been waiting for this moniker to be apt since Jack White invented it: Mr. Ingber, you're a reverse-contrarian hipster. Damn, that felt good.

(p.s. I like the song.. a lot.. especially the remix with Curtis' verse. Hate the p4k-worthy comment about how disliking the song is p4k-worthy)

You're assuming a lot based off one sentence GregIngber. I think it's a catchy song, but I'll take "Crazy" over it any day. I listened to the track three times and that's enough for me.

I hope the phrase "reverse-contrarian hipster" actually meant something when Jack White said it. Because, aside from assuming that it's a dismissal of my previous comment, I've got no clue what you're talking about. Which I think was the point. Which, in turn, makes your comment fairly masturbatory. Which, furthermore, explains why it felt so good.

When I invoke the P-word, I'm referring to a method of music criticism which seeks to fabricate a Venn diagram in which one set contains "cool people whose opinions matter", a second set contains "everyone else" and the third set is "people who like the music in question". The quality of the music is determined based on the extent to which the third set is contained by the first and excluded by the second. Case in point: the above write-up dedicates 4 words referring to the actual song, the perfectly reasonable description of it as "bold-faced goof-soul". The rest of it is posturing about how popular it is, how popular it should be, how popular it might be if it were slightly different, how other (un-specificed) songs are clearly superior. This sort of meaningless posturing is Pitchfork's bread and butter. I'd prefer not to see it here.

The 'contrarian hipster' dismisses anything purely on the grounds that it has garnered too much popularity, which Winstorfer didn't do. He simply stated that there has been better music released this summer, making the viral response to F*** You somewhat undeserved.
The 'reverse-contrarian hipster' has elevated themselves to a level of posturing beyond simply choosing to oppose the overexposed. To this person, it's best to accept the popular choice for reasons that are more advanced than the average consumer/listener/joe schmo.
To me, your argument embodied my interpretation of the phrase, which I think I remember White used to describe Meg's detractors. And I don't masturbate to grandiloquence, only Brazilian fart porn.

So yeah, late on this one but:

1. Me not liking this song has nothing to do with whether or not other people like it. I never, ever mention that it is popular but it shouldn't be, I merely said it's gone viral.

2. My problem with this song lies in that it's too easy. Cee-Lo used to be an artist that pushed boundaries (listen to anything off Goodie Mob's Soul Food) and now he's content to play the winking soul man who says the f word a lot. To me, that is a sad backwards move for an artist I hold in high esteem ("Cell Therapy" is the first rap song I ever loved, when I was nine years old).

3. And seriously, dude, you totally projected your feelings towards Pitchfork onto me and to this post. There's no trying to make people feel bad for liking this song; I'm just suggesting that maybe this song is getting outlandish praise due to the cussing. I mean, like I said, if this was just "i hate you" in the chorus instead of the titular phrase, this song would have fallen on deaf ears. There'd be no video, no Huffington Post, EW or other places posting on this song's "Song of the Summer" status. No one would have cared. Which is sad for Cee-Lo, but indicative of how we don't demand more than this.

h0gy: Ah, now I see your point. Except, I gave substantive reasons for why I thought "F*** You" is a good song. I'm actually the only person anywhere in this discussion who actually made any concrete statements about the music we're supposedly talking about. But why talk about music when you can make an endless series of very clever snide dismissals? That's what hipsters do best. And if me, finding hipster posturing to be a spineless substitute for meaningful engagement of art, makes me an [interject bulls**t ad homonym catchphase here], I can live with that.

andross: I can't really respond to an accusation of "projecting", since that's meaningless pop-psychology jargon that mostly serves as a convenient deflection for legitimate criticism. But fine, we can leave Pitchf__k out of it. But, to be fair, you didn't "merely" say the song had gone viral. My original comment in this thread was, I condend, an accurate transcription of the thinly veiled subtext of your comment. You wanted to trash the song, but since music criticism is hard and stuff, you instead trashed the people who like the song. That's insulting to the people who read this site. And look, I like Goody Mob as well, but the fact that you want Cee-Lo to spend the rest of his life doing the stuff he was doing a decade ago isn't a reasonable argument for why the stuff he's doing now is bad. And regarding the argument that, what I maintain is a brilliantly constructed pop song, is only popular because of an obscenity in the chorus, I would ask you to do an iTunes search for songs with the title "F--- You". There are dozens of other songs with this title, and I'm pretty certain none of *them* were a hit.

I don't even really like this track. Just thought I'd throw in a couple of pennies.

who the f--k are you?

does anyone listen to good music anymore?

thank god for cee lo and bands like gnarls. first of all your trite review of this song focuses on the fact that Animal Collective didn't write it. Second of all, what? goof soul? asinine. check your facts. disappointed in you prefix.

Ps. you suck.

HAHAHA.

<3

Stop being so intellectual about it. Its art, don't ruin it with your brain. Shut up and listen to the music... if you don't like it, turn it off. Cause you're really ruining it for everyone else.... you're both pretty.

Ingber brings the heat!

Catchy song, tongue in cheek hook, that's all you need for a great summer theme song. It's the kind of thing you shouldn't take too seriously.