Forget You

"Forget You" is the radio-safe twin of a song whose real title was its whole point, and the substitution creates a strange, productive tension — the arrangement is pure Motown pastiche, all tambourine, walking bass, handclaps on two and four, and a girl-group backing chorus, while the sentiment underneath is pure venom. The Smeezingtons' production is meticulous vintage cosplay: horns that sound like they were tracked in 1965, an organ pad, no bass drop anywhere. CeeLo sings it in a high, elastic soul tenor that keeps cracking upward into something between falsetto and laughter, and that laugh is the whole performance — the sound of a man whose humiliation has curdled into comedy. The lyric is a small, petty masterpiece of specificity: she left him for someone with a nicer car, he's broke, he can't stop caring, and the "ain't that some shit" aside lands like a shrug. Released in 2010 as a viral lyric video before viral lyric videos were a strategy, it became the year's great sing-along about being dumped for money. It works at a wedding reception and alone in a kitchen with a drink, which is a rare double.