Blind Mary

"Blind Mary is anyone who can love unconditionally and that's a rare quality"

• Cee-Lo, from an interview by The Guardian

"It represents a certain kind of person and a certain kind of love. This particular girl can't see, so material and shallow things just aren't of any concern to her. It's about how she really feels about me, without judging me. That unconditional love teaches me how to love her despite her disability. Of course, we're all disabled in one way or another."

• Cee-Lo, from an interview by Rolling Stone

I fell in love with this song the first time I heard it. It makes me really happy. I don't think it's about weed (doesn't weed see the sunshine?), though I guess it could be. I prefer to think of it as a feel good love song.

How clever would it be to name a song about weed "blind mary"?

Cmon' people this is Gnarls Barkley... not YOU.

Gnarls Barkley's music is psychosocial... once you get that, the songs magically make sense. We as modern day people are more concerned with how we appear than who we are... without eyes, Mary cannot judge that...

I'll let you guys figure out the rest...

Thank you Fuchi900. you made my day. When I first heard it I loved it. Then when I thought it might be about pot I was disappointed. This is too nice of a song to be wasted on such a mundane topic as marijuana.

Song about pot == tedious

Song about two people who love each other for what they are inside instead of the superficial == brilliant

Love is blind

This was coined by Shakespeare and was quite a favourite line of his. It appears in several of his plays, including Two Gentlemen of Verona, Henry V and The Merchant Of Venice. For example, this piece from The Merchant Of Venice, 1596:

JESSICA: Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains. I am glad 'tis night, you do not look on me, For I am much ashamed of my exchange: But love is blind and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit; For if they could, Cupid himself would blush To see me thus transformed to a boy.

This song is one of my favorite Gnarls Barkley song. It's both a clever love song about weed and also a commentary on people and real love.

I think it's clearly about weed and the line "She has never seen the sunshine" easily fits with that. Weed growers have had to develop indoor methods in order to avoid aerial surveillance of growing operations. As a result most illegal weed grown in the U.S., Canada, etc. doesn't actually see the sunshine.

"She's not staying, she's just passing through" makes me think of smoke passing through the lungs. The second verse is a bit tougher to rectify to weed but I think he's talking about his addiction in general. The drug is calling to him and the line "Before you know it I was holding her hand" shows that he's impulsively using it. The line "I'm so much prettier inside" is clever because it invokes a feel-good maxim about beauty not being skin-deep, but in the weed context it's meant to be taken literally. The only part of him the weed sees are his insides and they're much prettier than his outer appearance. That's really bleak to think about literally though; that he thinks the mess that are our inner organs are better looking than what's presented to the eye.

There's some really nested cleverness in the overall idea of the song that goes beyond just the lyrical content. It's a love song about a drug disguised as a love song about a girl. To me the implication of that is that the girl being used to disguise the true object of the song could never love him the way the object could and he can only find unconditional love like that from a drug. It's a brilliantly cynical and depressing idea dressed up as a love song.

One more thing... just how many weed dedications have been love songs to a girl named mary?

Did it really seem clever?

Wes Gil, how many songs about cocaine have used the word "line"? Oh whoops, Gnarls Barkley did that too. Just because it's about weed doesn't mean it can't be interesting or multi-faceted. Just like my commentary on you being condescending is at the same time a question of Cee-Lo's originality when it comes to writing lyrics, an implied notion that Cee-Lo has a conflicted view of drug use, and a fully condescending statement in and of itself.

I think beyond the weed, the song has to do with how we judge each other, as others have said. By stating that Blind Mary doesn't judge him, he implies that everyone else does. But since Blind Mary is a drug and not a person, he's doing one better -- implying that everyone judges everyone and casting doubt on the human experience ("she has never seen the sunshine, yet she's getting along just fine"). So maybe, just maybe, it'd be better for him to lose himself in drug use than to interact with other people ("Do you mind if I follow you?" and "Blind Mary marry me").

i think this song is obviously about Mary Ingalls. She was blind. She was really pretty, obviously. She wouldn't be able to see him.