Features | Articles
A Very Special Message from CMG
By Clayton Purdom | 1 December 2005
We here at CMG aren't in the business of panning musicians for fun. Our focus is clearly upon a certain strand of the musical spectrum that aspires to a certain level of esteem and artistic merit; when musicians within these parameters fall astray we sick our bloodthirsty attack dogs on them and chuckle at the ensuing disembowelment. At The Drive-In, for example, possessed a singularly incendiary talent; thus the Mars Volta needed Matt Stephens to take a shit upon it. Similarly, the transcendent quality of Weezer's first two albums necessitated that suckfactory Make Believe (2005) get besmirched in print. These are fun reviews to write.
Still, we don't indulge this pleasure needlessly; we don't eviscerate, say, Cowboy Troy or Hawthorne Heights just to inflate our collective self-esteem. None of us have a taste for that sort of music, so we don't touch it. At the end of the day, you may even find us admitting that these types of artists do, in fact, possess a particular merit, within their own constituents. We're all here, after all, because we love good music, however we may choose to define that. Whether we like these artists or not, we do salute the fact that they write songs that appeal to people and mean something, and, in some small way, make life better.
But there comes a time when we must slip from our comfortable musical niche back into the overstuffed shopping mall that is popular music, if only for a moment. There occasionally comes a track, the awesome force of which requires not so much that it be reviewed as simply reacted to. A track of colossal proportions, something that shakes the foundations of the musical idiom and forces us to reevaluate everything that has come before and after it, a single track that resounds through all spheres of music, art, and, indeed, the way we live our lives. There is just such a song on the airwaves right now, and its awesome force is violating the fabric of reality. I'm speaking, of course, about the Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps."
To simply note that this track (I'll not call it a song, for reasons elaborated later) is a soulless fucking godawful piss-chugging fetus-eating abomination is too little, too late. I could write a song review of it, sure, and I could use all the big mean words I know, but that wouldn't do this tyrannous life-destroyer justice. The Black Eyed Peas are, obviously, an easy target-it would be journalistically unsound for me to expound on why the band is loathsome, because you already know what a website like CMG is going to say about a group like the Black Eyed Peas, and if you're reading the site then you probably already feel the same way. Still, having heard this song, I must address it, if only to exorcise the demons it has imbedded within me. I write, then, as an act of expulsion, but I urge you to continue reading these words, despite their admittedly self-serving impetus.
Because this thing must be stopped.
We must stop its forward progress and bash in its skull, repeatedly and viciously, and once the last of its life has twitched out of its torn corpus we must continue to thrash it until the sun has gone long down and our arms are sore and nothing remains but gristle, clumped to the sand and picked at by the basest cur. This is not a "song," readers; it is the antithesis of music. It lacks chorus, verse, or progression, and, while this was the old guard's original complaint against hip hop, that culture was birthed out of the repressed urge to create. "My Humps" represents a total abandonment of meaning in pop music. I could criticize its lazy rhymes, ("junk" and "trunk," "sex me" and "sexy," "drama" and, um, "drama drama") or its nonexistent beat (haphazard synth bursts, manically ticking faux-congas, etc.), but the musical core of this song is such a sparsely populated din that it transcends evaluation by being, essentially, too simple to be picked apart.
This isn't to say that musical minimalism is, in and of itself, a bad thing; witness the Clipse's no-frills juggernaut "Grindin" for proof, or, shit, the Ramones' entire oeuvre. But the Black Eyed Peas have filled this track with more than its spare components would suggest, and it is this that I must react to, not the way the track "sounds." Indeed, the Black Eyed Peas deserve credit for hiding such monumentally lascivious motive within this petty framework.
For within this simple "pop song" (as many would defend this) there lies the very subversion of pop music, a depraved attempt to destroy our common cultural heritage. Think of this song's meaninglessness as a vacuum, a black hole. And, just like a black hole, it sucks: it sucks in the notion of "logical" pop music; it sucks in our need for melody, for dynamism and for form; it sucks in our taste for lyricism, elegance and nuance; it sucks in our innate thirst for motion, for rhythm, for dance. It sucks. It sucks. It sucks it sucks it sucks. It sucks in everything that we hold dear, it sucks in the very things that hold us together, it sucks it sucks it sucks. It sucks and sucks and sucks in the most pervasive of all art forms, and in the process it attempts to destroy our way of life. I'll not dare suggest that the Black Eyed Peas are actually terrorists, I'll only point out that the two enemies seem to share common motives. The possible ultimate ramifications of this line of questioning are so immense that I must leave their exposition to abler pens.
Where did these Black Eyed Peas come from? It seems just a few years ago that I, a fresh-faced scamp, was watching them at the Vans Warped Tour, bouncing invitingly to their minor hit "Joint and Jams." What happened to those people? Where did this "Fergie" and "Will.I.Am" come from? Can this possibly be the same group of people? Why would they create something like "My Humps"? These are questions I don't know the answers to, and they must also remain paths not traveled, lines of questioning not followed. It is late, after all, and I have listened to "My Humps" a lot tonight. I am only one person; I can only take so much.
But don't pity me. I have chosen to do this, and I am thankfully cognizant of the potentially devastating effects of this track. Save your pity for the gas station workers that must hear this over the radio, for the gym attendees innocently attempting fitness, for those stuck in cars without many radio options, for those that lack the ability or willingness to stop this beast from wrapping its tentacles around them, from pumping its thick, viscous hate into the veins of pop culture. Save your pity mostly for the children, the group to whom this abomination would most obviously appeal, and pray that they may resist it. The rest of us must fumble toward the light and begin the long task of discovering what it means to live in a post-"My Humps" world. We must come together with those we love and take hammer and nail to reconstruct all the things that have been destroyed. Wolf Parade may be able to help. So might all the canonical greats, from the Beatles and Dylan to Wu-Tang and Radiohead. In the face of everything "My Humps" has destroyed, we must relisten, reassess, relearn.
And then, we must rebuild.
Still, we don't indulge this pleasure needlessly; we don't eviscerate, say, Cowboy Troy or Hawthorne Heights just to inflate our collective self-esteem. None of us have a taste for that sort of music, so we don't touch it. At the end of the day, you may even find us admitting that these types of artists do, in fact, possess a particular merit, within their own constituents. We're all here, after all, because we love good music, however we may choose to define that. Whether we like these artists or not, we do salute the fact that they write songs that appeal to people and mean something, and, in some small way, make life better.
But there comes a time when we must slip from our comfortable musical niche back into the overstuffed shopping mall that is popular music, if only for a moment. There occasionally comes a track, the awesome force of which requires not so much that it be reviewed as simply reacted to. A track of colossal proportions, something that shakes the foundations of the musical idiom and forces us to reevaluate everything that has come before and after it, a single track that resounds through all spheres of music, art, and, indeed, the way we live our lives. There is just such a song on the airwaves right now, and its awesome force is violating the fabric of reality. I'm speaking, of course, about the Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps."
To simply note that this track (I'll not call it a song, for reasons elaborated later) is a soulless fucking godawful piss-chugging fetus-eating abomination is too little, too late. I could write a song review of it, sure, and I could use all the big mean words I know, but that wouldn't do this tyrannous life-destroyer justice. The Black Eyed Peas are, obviously, an easy target-it would be journalistically unsound for me to expound on why the band is loathsome, because you already know what a website like CMG is going to say about a group like the Black Eyed Peas, and if you're reading the site then you probably already feel the same way. Still, having heard this song, I must address it, if only to exorcise the demons it has imbedded within me. I write, then, as an act of expulsion, but I urge you to continue reading these words, despite their admittedly self-serving impetus.
Because this thing must be stopped.
We must stop its forward progress and bash in its skull, repeatedly and viciously, and once the last of its life has twitched out of its torn corpus we must continue to thrash it until the sun has gone long down and our arms are sore and nothing remains but gristle, clumped to the sand and picked at by the basest cur. This is not a "song," readers; it is the antithesis of music. It lacks chorus, verse, or progression, and, while this was the old guard's original complaint against hip hop, that culture was birthed out of the repressed urge to create. "My Humps" represents a total abandonment of meaning in pop music. I could criticize its lazy rhymes, ("junk" and "trunk," "sex me" and "sexy," "drama" and, um, "drama drama") or its nonexistent beat (haphazard synth bursts, manically ticking faux-congas, etc.), but the musical core of this song is such a sparsely populated din that it transcends evaluation by being, essentially, too simple to be picked apart.
This isn't to say that musical minimalism is, in and of itself, a bad thing; witness the Clipse's no-frills juggernaut "Grindin" for proof, or, shit, the Ramones' entire oeuvre. But the Black Eyed Peas have filled this track with more than its spare components would suggest, and it is this that I must react to, not the way the track "sounds." Indeed, the Black Eyed Peas deserve credit for hiding such monumentally lascivious motive within this petty framework.
For within this simple "pop song" (as many would defend this) there lies the very subversion of pop music, a depraved attempt to destroy our common cultural heritage. Think of this song's meaninglessness as a vacuum, a black hole. And, just like a black hole, it sucks: it sucks in the notion of "logical" pop music; it sucks in our need for melody, for dynamism and for form; it sucks in our taste for lyricism, elegance and nuance; it sucks in our innate thirst for motion, for rhythm, for dance. It sucks. It sucks. It sucks it sucks it sucks. It sucks in everything that we hold dear, it sucks in the very things that hold us together, it sucks it sucks it sucks. It sucks and sucks and sucks in the most pervasive of all art forms, and in the process it attempts to destroy our way of life. I'll not dare suggest that the Black Eyed Peas are actually terrorists, I'll only point out that the two enemies seem to share common motives. The possible ultimate ramifications of this line of questioning are so immense that I must leave their exposition to abler pens.
Where did these Black Eyed Peas come from? It seems just a few years ago that I, a fresh-faced scamp, was watching them at the Vans Warped Tour, bouncing invitingly to their minor hit "Joint and Jams." What happened to those people? Where did this "Fergie" and "Will.I.Am" come from? Can this possibly be the same group of people? Why would they create something like "My Humps"? These are questions I don't know the answers to, and they must also remain paths not traveled, lines of questioning not followed. It is late, after all, and I have listened to "My Humps" a lot tonight. I am only one person; I can only take so much.
But don't pity me. I have chosen to do this, and I am thankfully cognizant of the potentially devastating effects of this track. Save your pity for the gas station workers that must hear this over the radio, for the gym attendees innocently attempting fitness, for those stuck in cars without many radio options, for those that lack the ability or willingness to stop this beast from wrapping its tentacles around them, from pumping its thick, viscous hate into the veins of pop culture. Save your pity mostly for the children, the group to whom this abomination would most obviously appeal, and pray that they may resist it. The rest of us must fumble toward the light and begin the long task of discovering what it means to live in a post-"My Humps" world. We must come together with those we love and take hammer and nail to reconstruct all the things that have been destroyed. Wolf Parade may be able to help. So might all the canonical greats, from the Beatles and Dylan to Wu-Tang and Radiohead. In the face of everything "My Humps" has destroyed, we must relisten, reassess, relearn.
And then, we must rebuild.