Screenshot from the official music video

(9) MOJO: GNARLS BARKLEY – GOING ON (2008)

B-SIDE: RUN (I’M A NATURAL DISASTER) (2008)

“But I’m going on

And I’m prepared to go it alone

I’m going on

May my love lift you up to the place you belong

I’m going on

And I promise I’ll be waiting for you”

A song from my life soundtrack – or the soundtrack of the film in my mind.

Psychedelic soul duo Gnarls Barkley (or Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo Green) are better known for their first album St Elsewhere and its hit single “Crazy”, but I prefer this song from their second album The Odd Couple in 2008.

As is clear from the lyrics, the song is about leaving something (and clearly someone) behind and, well, going on – to answer a powerful call, whether a call to freedom, the mythic hero’s call to adventure or even a mystical call to something beyond this world altogether. Hence it’s another song from my life soundtrack as it coincided with a time in my life when I was going on (and had to go on) from someone and something.

Indeed, for me, this song has echoes of Hendrix’s otherworldly Voodoo Child, not so much in its instrumentality (as Hendrix’s guitar is, after all, unmatched), but in how it similarly casts “an even more powerful spell by delivering the lyric in the voice (or chorus) of a voodoo priest” – something that is even clearer in the music video for the song.

As for my B-side, I have to go with Run (I’m a Natural Disaster), a single from the same album – perhaps best known as a song from a film soundtrack, the X-Men: First Class film.

RATING: 

B-TIER (HIGH-TIER)