My Humps by Black Eyed Peas

Black Eyed Peas - New Music - More Music Videos

One of my favorite assignments that I gave my high school music theory was the "mix CD." I asked all of my students to make a mix CD or 9 songs that they loved and one song they hated. This was a way I could get to know my students better and use musical examples they were familiar with to teach about music. The one song they hated provided a great way to discuss how we analyze the quality of music.

One semester almost every one one of my students had “My Humps” by The Black Eye Peas as the song they hated.

How could so many of my student dislike “My Humps?” It’s a popular song. It was a top ten song on the charts, and sold double platinum. That means two million copies of this song sold and “My Humps” won a Grammy for “Best Pop Performance by A Duo or Group with Vocal.” Now granted their competition wasn’t exactly fierce, (The Pussycat Dolls), but “My Humps” technically won a Grammy.

Often things that are popular are of a high quality, but sometimes they aren’t and the bottom line is that “My Humps” is a pretty mediocre song and I’m not quite sure why so many people seem to like it. I haven’t met any of these people personally, but two million people couldn’t have possibly bought this song ironically, someone out there most honestly liked this song.

There is nothing, sexy, erotic or appealing about describing your body using the words “hump” or “lump.” When I hear hump I think of the Quasimodo, the hunchback or Notre Dame and when I hear lump, I think of breast cancer.

“My Humps” sits at mid-tempo beat that is not fast enough to really dance too but not slow enough to groove too. Sometimes if a song is fast enough and has a great groove you can ignore the lyrics all together but the slower tempo and Fergie’s “performance” makes sure we understood every syllable.

Fergie doesn’t really sing or rap the words. She seems to recite them with the emotional expression found in a middle school play. Part of the issue is what she is saying. The lyrics include describing her own body in the least sexy way possible and then proceeding to drop as many brand names as possible. She claims that guys just keep buying her stuff and she doesn’t know why.The guys answer asking what is she going to do “with all that junk insider her trunk” and then talks about how the girl is making him buy her stuff. These lyrics are trite but at least they make sense unlike other words in the song.

Let’s spend time not money,
I mix you milk with my cocoa puff,
Milky, milk cocoa,

What?!? Are you serious?!? If someone can explain to me what he is talking about, please tell, I’d really like to know. I like to think of myself as being pretty good at explicating lyrics, but I can’t come up with anything meaningful out of those words.

Maybe, that’s just the thing, maybe the Black Eye Peas aren’t being serious. I mean their break out song “Let’s Get It Started,” was originally released “Let’s Get Retarded.” Any group that would think try to work up the phrase “let’s get retarded” as a phrase to mean partying clearly can't be serious. It’s so much that it’s offensive, it’s just not cool.

Maybe Alanis Morissette can help us out.

Alanis Morissette - MY HUMPS from Alanis Morissette

What you begin to understand watching Alanis’ interpretation of “My Humps” is how preposterous this song really is and how that is exactly what makes it appealing. Experiencing this stilted creativity is like watching the first couple episodes of American Idol to watch people who don’t know how bad they are. For me that's really not all that entertaining.

Maybe it's a little bit more simple. Maybe there is nothing appealing about the song and it's popularity is be due to the fact that people just simply saw the video enough and heard it on the radio to the point where they began to like it.

Or maybe The Black Eyed Peas created a referential piece of art to comment popular music's warning over-objectifying of the female form in popular music.

Somehow I think not.