Black Eyed Peas, “I Gotta Feeling”

A commenter on Slate said: “the fastest way to discredit yourself as a music journalist…is to write that there is and should be a correlation between Billboard chart results and critical reviews. That’s like saying the Black Eyed Peas’ ‘Tonight’s Gonna be a good night’ deserves a spot amongst every critics year-end top ten list.”

Not to get side-tracked too far but, actually, the fastest way for a music journalist to discredit themselves is to say “I broke _____” We all have been ahead of the curve on certain artists who have gone on to do very well but to think that the difference between a band breaking through or toiling in obscurity was you deciding to get off of your ass and write “these guys are pretty good” is absurd.

I haven’t decided if “I Gotta Feeling” (the song referenced by the commenter above, incorrectly, as is his sentiment) will make my top 10 list for the end of the year (it’s not done), but it stands a good chance of it because of its ubiquity. For fourteen straight weeks, “I Gotta Feeling” was the number one single in the United States, preceded immediately by twelve for another Black Eyed Peas single, “Boom Boom Pow”. No other act has dominated the Hot 100 singles chart like that; the closest anyone has come was within two and a half months.

“I Gotta Feeling” is such an optimistic song in a time when people had little reason to be (an unemployment rating flirting with double digits is the most obvious example) and with a big chorus and even bigger hook, it’s quite easy to see why people took to it so much and why it was everywhere from mid-Summer through mid-Fall. It didn’t cater to any “lowest common denominator”, as that Slate commenter suggested, but appealed to people’s sense of hope (similar to will.I.am’s “Yes We Can” video he made last year to promote Barack Obama’s candidacy for president). When people were getting up in the morning and looking for jobs or headed to a doctor’s office or getting dressed for a night at a club hoping to get laid, it was the jam that convinced a not-insignifcant number of people that things would be alright; that they could dance and sing along to it, even better. It was the right song at the right time and that took it to number one for more than three straight months.

“I Gotta Feeling” probably won’t make my top 10 list when it’s all said and done: I thought it the verses were a little clunky and awkward (and actually prefer the more boastful “Boom Boom Pow”) but the pure energy and optimism the song exudes is, for me at least, pretty damn hard to resist.

This was a few weeks old but came across my Twitter feed a few times today and is new to me.

Oprah didn’t just get several thousand of her closest friends out for a live performance of Black Eyed Peas’ number one for fourteen weeks smash “I Gotta Feeling” for the start of her 24th season. She flash mobbed the damn thing.