Black Eyed Peas - My Humps


“Whatcha gonna do with all that junk/ All that junk inside your trunk?/ I’m a gonna get you drunk/ Get you love-drunk/ Off my hump.”

I don’t want to like this.

I mean, I *really* don’t want to like this. But being the inclusive, open-minded, non-popist blogger I am, I have to admit it. There’s actually a BEP track in existence I will listen to without being inspired to commit wanton acts of violence. A call to worship “lovely lady lumps”? The centre cannot hold for long after this, I’m telling you.

It’s the fact it sounds like a crazy novelty record, for a start. Divinely mindless idiocy, backed by such delicious synth action. What sub-Hollaback beats, oh the droning repetition! And Fergie – the woman whose genetic freak abs strike terror into my heart every time I lay eyes on them – finally sounding like somebody else! Cooing along like a valley-girl, I can at last pretend her muscles won’t leap out of the virtual ether and smother me with their definition.

As Anthony says – it’s almost Fannypack-esque. Except, in that case there would be a large dose of hipster irony undermining the stupidity; this way, we’re left with the dumb-assness intact.

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Lisa Scott Lee - Electric


"Ten thousand volts in my head ain't no way to unwind/ Watch out in case I short circuit and leave you behind."

Ah, the joys of the 3rd tier pop ‘star’.

Not for them the dizzy world of crack production teams, marketing blitzes and the front pages of Heat. Oh no, it’s obscure music channels, local Asda openings and barely scraping a top twenty chart position before being unceremoniously dropped. If they’re very lucky.

Lisa is pretty much the epitome of this dying breed: Former member of a popular 90’s dance-pop act? Steps were colour-co-ordinated, excruciatingly annoying and now utterly irrelevant. Same level partner? Jonny Shantell was briefly a late-entry member of the original Popstars reality TV band. Similarly afflicted family? Think her poor brothers, ‘3sl’ (There were 3 of them. Called Scott Lee. Don’t you see?) now long since absent from the chart scene.

But what’s this? A good, nay, great single from such a doomed breed? Surely not! As death cries go, it may not be a ‘State of Mind’, but the laden electronics and high-pitched breathlessness go a damn long way to making me hope we get an album. OK, that’s aiming a little high – how about another single?

The frantic need for success oozes from every note – not that there are many of them. This operates at the upper end of the scale, and stays there despite any conventional need to, I don’t know, vary things a tiny bit? But somehow, it works, thanks to some well placed descending ‘Uh oh oh’s (which sound everything and nothing like Beyonces) and the whispered layers which manage to elevate even a mediocre voice.

‘Tis a pity the girl has pledged to quit the industry if she doesn’t make top 10. If Rachel can hardly make it, she certainly won’t.

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