[thedaythemusicdied #1] Black Eyed Peas- Humps

Hua Hsu's takedown of this song on slate (titled "A song so awful it hurts the mind") is now legendary. Hsu correctly notes that the song is "so bad as to veer into evil," that one of its many manifest failures is "that it tries to evoke a coquettish nudge and wink, but head-butts and bloodies the target instead." Hsu also brilliantly coins the term "coke thin" to describe the timbre. [Explanation- this wonderfully evokes the way the ear ringing effect of cocaine reliably screws up music production, leading to a characteristic tinniness. Compare the debacle of coked out late period Led Zeppelin with the brilliant timbre achieved by the Jimmy Page in their early studio efforts (with III being the pinnacle). Also consider all of the bad Bowie albums, the ones Tony Visconti destroyed by allowing Bowie to show up with mountains of cocaine for everyone, but no actual songs.]

I really don't have anything else to add to Hsu's incisive critique, so I'll quote some choice bits.

It's not Awesomely Bad; it's Horrifically Bad. The Peas receive no bonus points for a noble missing-of-the-mark or misguided ambition. . . "My Humps" is a moment that reminds us that categories such as "good" and "bad" still matter. Relativism be damned! There are bad songs that offend our sensibilities but can still be enjoyed, and then there are the songs that are just really bad—transcendentally bad, objectively bad.

As a piece of music, "My Humps" is a stunning assemblage of awful ideas. The song's playful pogo and coke-thin, ring-tone synth line interpolate Sexual Harassment's 1982 left-field electro hit, "I Need A Freak". But where the original trafficked in something icky, sinister, and darkly sexual, the Peas' call-and-response courtship fails to titillate—in fact, it's enough to convince one to never, ever ogle again. The "humps" in question belong to Fergie, who brandishes her "lovely lady lumps" for the purpose of procuring various gifts from men who, one would assume, find the prospect of "lumps" very exciting—one lump begetting another lump, if you will.

"What you gon' do with all that ass/ All that ass inside them jeans? … What you gon' do wit all that breast?/ All that breast inside that shirt?" rapper Will.I.Am teases in response, rendering literal what had heretofore been pretty much literal. It's a song that tries to evoke a coquettish nudge and wink, but head-butts and bloodies the target instead. It isolates sectors of the female anatomy that obsessive young men have been inventing language for since their skulls fused, and yet it emerges only with "humps" and "lumps"—at least "Milkshake" sounded delicious.

I was going to actually embed the video, but I just can't bring myself to. Check out Hsu's full review. It's nice to be clear about precisely why bad things are bad.