Someone Said It
The Humps in QuestionFinally someone has said it. I've been waiting for this. "My Humps" is one of the worst songs ever. But it may tear a worm hole through the Amesomely Bad Irony/Goodness TimeSpace continuum. It misses "Awesomely Bad" by a long shot. This is no "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi. It actually does, as the Slate article suggest - veer into evil terroritory. However, this past weekend I was at a wedding and when the song came on - everyone went nuts. Of course, My brain had just been toweling-off it's dip in the whiskey jacuzzi before a splash in the gin pool. The idiotic literalness of the song - combined with the awful synths - makes it, I don't know - so stupid you can't blame it for it's perversity. At some point the rocks have been chewed up so thoroughly in your mouth - that they become silt and can no longer damage you. It almost feels good.
Posted on 12/6/2005 01:48 PM
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Michael Brendan Dougherty
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Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Culture
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6 Comments
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1 Reference
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Source: Notes on "Humps"Irony and camp have recast taste as an ethical shell game and we feel no guilt celebrating things that are, in the parlance of VH1, Awesomely Bad. But are there still songs that qualify as "bad"? Consider the Los Angeles hip-hop quartet the Black Eyed Peas. Their current single, "My Humps," is one of the most popular hit singles in history. It is also proof that a song can be so bad as to veer toward evil.
Reader Comments (6)
Also why link to the song? I lost control, hit the link by accident, and then proceeded to scream in terror by the monstrosity sounding in my room. It was darn awful ;-)
Actually, I changed my mind. Michael, give me every drop of that whiskey you've got. I think I might need it sometime in the near future.
Yet, the most interesting aspect of your musing is the overwhelmingly positive reaction the party-goers had to such an awful sound...
One wonders do, otherwise decent folks, recognize the silliness of such pop/hip hop "music." Was the reaction honest or simply an illustration of collective psychosis brought about in large part b/c folks have an inordinate desire to feel/be perceived as relevant and hip.
No problem w/ the so called hip and edgy, except for the mass produced kind...
A close friend said that it is just about getting loose - and having fun and being silly. And I am not a scrooge enough to toss this aside. I tend to think "Milkshake" was a much much better hip hop song - it was more fun, it was of course much more fun in it's language.
Since the song was not properly released as a single and was instead driven by requests/radio programmers - I think it is listener driven.
About five years ago rapper Ludacris had a similarly awful song about Ho's that was generally as stupid and funny as My Humps - probably funnier. There was a simple vandal thrill in listening to it. I think that most of our white upper middle class decent folks enjoy this stuff not because they buy into it wholeheartedly - but because it is so transparently base it is swerving in and out of the parody lane. Imagine a lady dressing in the clothes of a whore for the joke of it.
That said, last night when my roommate told me the story of this conniving, utterly airheaded bimbo who's making his life hell, I just had to play "My Humps." It was definitely one of those "songs of the moment" moments, and though both of us detest rap/soul/R&B, we laughed for about five minutes at the lyrics that so accurately described her.
That is about the only positive thing I can say for the song--it's so bad it describes people I know, and that may or may nor be a positive thing after all. But it is nothing if not amusing and memorable.