Musician Monday: Danger Mouse

Hey everyone, it's your favorite 500 or so words you read every week; Musician Monday! It's finally summer time, and with that I want to talk about one of the musicians I hold in high regard. Many may not know his name because instead of taking center stage, he prefers to have a role more in the background. Behind many famous artists like Cee Lo Green, Beck, The Black Keys, and James Mercer, this man has provided a lot of the catchy beats that you have grown to know and love over this past decade. Of course, I'm talking about Brian Burton, or by his stage name, Danger Mouse.

Danger Mouse is a talented individual, playing guitar, base, keyboard, drums, organ, and synth in varying amounts in each of his collaborations. As stated before, Danger Mouse is not known as a solo artist. Every big project he has produced or been a part of has been in collaboration or a remix of other content. Gaining his first popularity by creating The Grey Album, a full album mash-up of Jay-Z's "The Black Album" and The Beatles' "The White Album", Danger Mouse was after asked to produce with the Gorillaz to create Demon Days. Mouse then formed Gnarls Barkley with now solo artist Cee Lo Green. Being the brains behind the beats of such hits like "Crazy" and "Goin On" in this duo brought them to the top of the charts. After the two split, Mouse then helped produce Beck's Modern Guilt. In a more recent duo, Mouse has been working with James Mercer in one of my favorite groups, Broken Bells (in fact in my Top 10 Artists of All Time and Space). He also created an album with Sparklehorse called Dark Was the Night and an album called Rome with many different lead artists, including Norah Jones and Jack White. Clearly Danger Mouse has done so much for recent music; let's take a look at some of his best stuff:

Going On (2:54)

From Gnarls Barkley's album Odd Couple, "Going On" is my favorite song by the duo. It's so upbeat and got such a great beat, I can't help but want to stop everything I'm doing and start dancing when I hear it. Combining Green's awesome voice and Mouse's amazing instrumentals and production, Gnarls Barkley challenges the likes of The White Stripes and The Black Keys for best duo of the new millennium.

Black (3:32)

Featured in the fourth season finale of hit show Breaking Bad, Black is a song that evokes such a relieved emotion from the audience that a great weight has been lifted. This song comes from the album Rome that Danger Mouse produced with Daniele Luppi, and it's my favorite on the album.

The Ghost Inside (3:18)

While he was in the Broken Bells duo, I first discovered Danger Mouse as his own separate entity from Gnarls Barkley, and this was the song I first heard (shoutout to Jess for showing me this awesome track). Both Mercer and Mouse kill it on this track, making in my favorite until their recent album with "After the Disco" as shown in my Top 10 article.

As can be seen, Danger Mouse has been in the background of many of this decades awesome and iconic indie songs. Where else do you think we'll see him in the future? Let me know in the comments and let me know your opinion on his work. Stay tuned for later in the week when I release the final part of my Spotify article as well!