The Encroaching Ubiquity of I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas

Unlike "Celebration," "I Gotta Feeling" affords a wedding-reception crowd:

-Vocal parts of men and women
-Vocal parts for those who can sing and those who cannot
-Vocal parts for groomsmen and bridesmaids
-The high "woooo-hooo" part for those who want to sing a little but not a lot
-A 2-for-1 deal. The song could be 2.5 minutes, but then (after they sing "do it again"), it repeats itself

er, vocal parts for men and women

I believe this song may be the eternal flipside to Carmina Burana.

i feel like a fun-ruiner for h8ing this song. shit sounds like a slice of wonder bread and a glass of water 2 me.

last night i was driving home at the end of a really good night, flipped over to the pop station, and this song was playing, and for real, it was AWESOME.

i thought about c&p'ing relevant stats from the song's wikipedia entry about how it's the highest selling digital single ever and the 5th biggest billboard hit of the last decade and went to #1 in 20 countries but really it was hard to sift through it all and isolate just the facts that best convey its utter hugeness.

btw i don't like to do the predict that other people will change their minds in the future thing with music, i think it's obnoxious, but for real, "I Gotta Feeling" didn't place in ILM Top 100 2005-2009: TRACKS but i strongly suspect in 5 or 10 years if you did that poll over it would do pretty well.

The first time I ever heard the song was following some link to this video, so right off the bat it seemed like a classic freshman-orientation anthem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zcOFN_VBVo

Unlike "Celebration," "I Gotta Feeling" affords a wedding-reception crowd:

-Vocal parts of men and women
-Vocal parts for those who can sing and those who cannot
-Vocal parts for groomsmen and bridesmaids
-The high "woooo-hooo" part for those who want to sing a little but not a lot
-A 2-for-1 deal. The song could be 2.5 minutes, but then (after they sing "do it again"), it repeats itself

Totally! Also, the whole "tonight's gonna be a good night" theme affords winking reference to wedding-night hanky-panky.

also: go out and smash it
like omg

i wd like this song more with a female vocal. funny it has so many supporters around here! also funny that this thread is being started now. i didn't realize it was still going strong, but i guess it is!

also funny that this thread is being started now. i didn't realize it was still going strong, but i guess it is!

yeah, love the song to death, but wasn't it "on the way down the mountain of ubiquity onto the foothills of annoyingly overexposed" like, nine months ago?

I was just saying if I ever have kids there will be like a 100% chance that I will hear this song at their wedding in 25 or 30 years

i think a year out is when you really get to be able to tell whether a song is ever going away or if it's kind of going to be perennially ubiquitous. but yeah, this thread could've started anytime.

strengths of "I Gotta Feeling" imo:

-hooks
-catchy, danceable
-fun for the whole family

weaknesses of "I Gotta Feeling" imo:

-hooks are unengaging and derivative
-maximal pop form for its minimal content
-fun for the whole family
-every single member of the black eyed peas annoys the shit out of me regardless of whether I like the song they are performing on are not

*or not

More like it's going from overexposed in a number-one-hit way to permeating itself into the very fiber of our society.

Official video is surprisingly racy (Fergie in thong, girl/girl makeout, etc.).

I mean, there are things I think that could be improved - - for example, the whole "monday, tuesday, wednesday" section is kind of a waste of space, and arguably works against the idea that tonight is the special, magic night that one has a feeling about. I kinda wish he just made a strong case for Thursday and Thursday alone. But these are quibbles, the thing was massive for a reason and I'll save my hate for "Boom Boom Pow," which was just moronic.

yeah running down the days of the week in a pop song is usually serious filler.

4 me, it just feels rly fucking tepid 4 a dance song. i dunno, i'm having trouble coming up with criticisms that don't rely on tired standard issue pop song h8rade. im not rly engaged by the song at any point, and i dont feel like it ever goes anywhere. like wheres the dynamism? if it werent for its creeping ubiquity i feel like i would have 4gotten about this song a while ago.

i like that it's not very dynamic -- you just have this nice pretty melody with a kinda cool unique texture looping over and over with a bunch of different vocal hooks alternating over it and the drums never hit that hard or feel like an important piece of the whole. makes it feel kind of singular and unusual as a dance party staple.

this song was made so little kids and old people can dance together
it's gonna be kind of stupid and bouncy

this song is awesome hatersto the left

at most, i can come up with "it's nice"

but that's just for me, personally, and i think it has a lot to do with the vocal. i totally see why some dude likes it. it's a feel-good, nostalgic anthem for friendship, and it functions well in that regard.

the fact that they decided not just to write the most bar mitzvah friendly song ever but to add "MAZEL TOV" immediately bumps this from classic to all-time-classic

understand that different folks like different stuff, but it's hard to get my head around the idea that people can't see what's so immediately & durably appealing abt this song. first time i heard it was on the car radio in maine while visiting my folks. on first listen, the best pop song i'd heard in at least a year, what i always hope the radio will sound like (though it hardly ever does). seemed obvious to me that it would be HUGE. maybe not huge forever and bolted to the national DNA, but still...

the fact that they decided not just to write the most bar mitzvah friendly song ever but to add "MAZEL TOV" immediately bumps this from classic to all-time-classic

plus yeah that

something like 93% of my appreciation for this song comes from the 'mazel tov'

I should add that I haven't yet encountered this in a dance club context, only as the video or as something playing in a car, say, on the way home from work, which really is a great format for it. The repeating loop has this anticipatory quality to it, like the tension is always building up not so much for this song, but for the NEXT song which is when your night actually begins. Alternately, I guess, the whole song is the night in miniature, with the journey to the club, the exciting explosive party, and then the chilled-out "wooooooooooo-hoo" section where it feels like they just stepped out to get some fresh air and it's cold outside tonight and everything is feeling pretty great and it's good to be alive, etc.

And then you have fucking Fergie saying "DRANK!!!!" which is a real problem IMO, although yeah it gives people something to shout at wedding receptions.

i def love the "mazel tov"

but dubbing this the best pop song in at least a year is beyond infathomable to me.

at least this song is better than "boom boom pow"

*unfathomable :)

i had that first and then second-guessed myself!!

The days of the week aren't filler when folks are dancing to it. If anything, that's the part where the lyrics become a double-time beat, kind of the climax to the song.

Another thing that works about the song: the minute-and-a-half into that gives everyone time to set down their drinks or birthday cake and make their way out to the dance floor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGECbTuTId0

but dubbing this the best pop song in at least a year is beyond iunfathomable to me.

well, if popularity's any yardstick, i'm not alone in that...

I got a feeling vs. all my friends

not gonna make that poll cause I make too many polls lately but

that EJO version reminds me of Maher Shalal Hash Baz.

and yeah I scrolled down this thread to find where the new comments began, before scrolling all the way up to find that the whole thing was new. It does pain me that this song won't go away.

"Hung Up" has the same structure and dynamics (long into, double-feature structure, slight mellowing out to catch your breath in the middle before driving through to the end), but it's all about longing, dancing through pain. You don't want that at a kid's birthday party.

well, if popularity's any yardstick, i'm not alone in that...

― a CRASBO is a "criminally related" ASBO (contenderizer), Thursday, July 29, 2010 10:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no, you're definitely not. i find myself disagreeing with the general population on a lot of #1 singles.

The days of the week aren't filler when folks are dancing to it. If anything, that's the part where the lyrics become a double-time beat, kind of the climax to the song.

Yeah, I agree insofar as I love them rhythmically but just wish they were doing more in terms of lyrical content. Sort of an "Ob-La-Di" moment, you just go "how much better would this song be if those were actual (and good) lyrics?"

It would be hard to come up with something as rhythmic and repetitive, and so satisfying for a crowd on the dancefloor, as ___DAY ___DAY ___DAY ___DAY

I mean, I was at a friend's (lol) 40th birthday party a few months ago. He married 10 years ago, is a fundraiser for non-profits, lives in a tony but urban neighborhood, and his neighbors made up most of the 30 or so guests. When this song came on, everyone rushed the dance floor. When it was about two and a half minutes in, everyone was kind of winding down, as if the song was going to end, and then the song went back to its original momentum with those days of the week adding a big extra oomph, so that we were all happy and spent when the song finally did end.

i know this is a very me thing to say, but i really do find it incredibly odd that this song rivaled MC's "We Belong Together" in terms of weeks at #1. very odd.

I think the real beauty is how the beat drops out on some Black Sheep "engine engine number nine..." shit but actually drops out for A WHOLE VERSE so when it comes back it's like wowowowow

ugh i love this song. there was one shot in the video with some girl who looked like she was drunk and stumbling in her heels (although i'm probably imagining it) that always made me feel like the song was secretly a little tragic.

^^^ yeah

makes an appearance at 1:16 of "lightweight jamming": THAT'S LIGHTWEIGHT JAMMIN'

some ppl really despise this song. i remember rev & lex raining hate down on it in the 2009 trax poll.

it's the kind of song that tends to pale in comparison with other super-hits because of its simple-mindedness, but it's also the kind of song that people love because of its simple-mindedness, so it's no surprise that it is divisive.

I don't despise this song. It's like a 4/10, prob won't change the station if it comes on the radio joint. I get why it's popular, I just don't get why people here are falling all over it.

the word "encroaching" being in this thread title still cracks me up

"boom boom pow" is also still a hundred times better than this song

duh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3PRmu0tr6k&feature=youtu.be

My pet peeve is indie-ish songwriters messing up a cover by making fun of it, coming from the angle that what they're covering is a shitty piece of craftsmanship when it's actually as carefully put together as anything in their own catalog.

actually I think that's great because it usually exposes the indie-ish songwriters for the talent-lite hacks most of them are

Like they need any help with that.

ha fair point

Never having had any desire to check out Jeff Tweedy, this will ensure that turns into a lifelong trend.

so this didn't end up becoming that ubiquitous, did it? haven't heard it on the radio in ages, and i listen a lot.

it felt p ubiquitous to me the year it came out, but that was largely because at the time i had cokehead downstairs neighbors who would come home at 3 in the morning and blast it; their stereo was apparently set up against a wall directly under my bedroom, and the sound would travel up through the floor, through my mattress, and into my pillow. it was actually louder if i was lying down.

I don't think I've heard this song in a couple years.

Maybe like once since the super bowl disaster

ubiquitous pop songs always drop off the radar in the subsequent year or two. in this case i'm very glad of that. doubtless it'll eventually return as a staple though, sigh

yeah this turned out not to really have staying power. especially compared to, like, "Single Ladies," which came out about 6 months earlier.

i feel like it's remained really influential on pop music, though. there's still at least a few "I Gotta Feeling" soundalike major label singles every year, and I feel like it kicked off the whole wave of 'wistful party song' type hits like "We Can't Stop."

Sorry, what's wistful about I Gotta Feeling?

Autotuning on ''..and then we'll do it agaiaaian,'' and the little doodle-WOOdle-oodle-oo sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0S2PtFP2Jo

The comparison with "Celebration" is apt. And I love both songs, and hope and plan to hear both at my son's bar mitzvah someday!

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, July 29, 2010 7:53 PM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Update: did in fact play this at my son's bar mitzvah

Lol, what a lovely thread revive

Congratulations!

I genuinely miss the days of ubiquitous Black Eyed Peas. Just learned that they went back to their roots two years ago and made a political rap album, accompanied by a sci-fi Marvel comic about the crack epidemic?

Ritmo (Bad Boys for life)" by The Black Eyed Peas with J Balvin is #1 on Billboard's Hot Latin chart. Eh, not that impressive. Not good.

Holy crap, my kids and I were cracking up playing this in the car just last week. One didn't believe me that a singer actually says "l'chaim!" My theory is they wrote this *specifically* for bar and bat mitzvahs, after spending time in Hollywood and hearing about all the big paychecks peers had been getting for private performances.