Cee Lo Green - The Lady Killer

Big singles can often become millstones. On pop albums, in particular, an ubiquitous lead single can overshadow the rest of the record. Such a scenario was what was feared with Cee Lo Green’s third solo album, ‘The Lady Killer’. The massive single in question is of course ‘Fuck You!’. It’s become almost inescapable since it made its radio debut a few months back, but it’s a big single that we assure you is perfectly OK to like. We can also say for certain that it’s (gasp!) not the best song on the album.

Cee Lo has been here before, though. As part of Gnarls Barkley, he was behind ‘Crazy’. The song was one of the best singles of 2006. ‘Fuck You!’ (relegated to a bonus track on the album - something that leaves a bad taste in the mouth), in our humble opinion, is, hands down, the best single of 2010.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, there is plenty more where that came from.

Almost any song here could be a single, and tracks like ‘Satisfied’ (probably the second most immediate moment on the album) and ‘Cry Baby’ display Cee Lo at the peak of his powers. Both are unashamedly big, swelling pop songs that could very well achieve the same level of success.

The album title should not be taken literally, though that particular subject does crop up on the oddly sinister-sounding ‘Bodies’ (‘At sunrise, the morning papers read, they found a body in my bed’), a song that manages to fit the context of the album despite sounding markedly different to everything else on offer.

The man also flirts with disco on ‘Bright Lights Bigger City’, a song every bit as expansive as its title suggests. There are also some choice metaphors on offer on the sexually-charged ‘Wildflower’ that display his knack for a cutting lyric - but then he’s already shown that to us: ‘I guess the change in my pocket wasn’t enough, and I’m like, ‘fuck you!”’

‘The Lady Killer’ is far more consistent than either of the Gnarls Barkley records. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the quality of Cee Lo’s voice. He doesn’t put in any sub-par performances here, and his songwriting ability is similarly up to scratch. The result? A killer album.