The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: APRIL FOOL'S!

PSYCHE!: TIE: "My Humps" (2005) - Black Eyed Peas; "She Bangs" (2004) - William Hung

I have a friend who once told me that life--every aspect of it--was all about sex. War, religion, taxes, death, vegetables, space exploration, and every topic I could think of he reduced to its essence, to its origin, to sex. Even music? Especially music he said. To further prove his theory, we scanned the radio, and every song we heard that night--from the likes of "Stairway to Heaven" to "Wind Beneath My Wings" to "A Change Is Gonna Come"--he deconstructed till he unearthed the sexual center of each song. I was aghast at first, but come to find out...he was right. It's all about sex, even music, pop music especially.

Why beat around the bush here? Let's get straight to the point. If music is about sex, then musicians should be honest with themselves and with their audience, and no one is more honest on record than Fergie for the Black Eyed Peas. She reduces the pop song down to its essence by putting her wares and her derriere front and center. She knows that it's not her voice or her songwriting that we--the audience--care about; no, we want to know more about her breasts and her butt, and so she tells us, again and again, repeatedly repeating about her lumps and her hump, because the more we hear those words, the more we'll thing about her secondary sexual characteristics, and the more we'll think about sex, and--therefore--the closer we'll come to our true selves, our sexual selves. Music should free the mind, right? Well, it should free the body, too, and with "My Humps," Fergie and the Black Eyed Peas--who give her only the sparest of

backup, so as to not let the music get in the way of her message--do both. They want us to think about her hump and her lumps so that we can be unencumbered by any other profound thoughts; Fergie puts her butt in our face so that we can finally see the world. Like Michael Bolton sang, she makes us want to touch her there...and ourselves, too.

The second song listed here in this slot--and the only tie of the entire countdown--is as important as the first song in the slot; in fact, they're sister songs of a sort. In "My Humps," Fergie sings about herself so that we can be free to think about our own private parts; in "She Bangs," William Hung sings about a woman (could it be Fergie?) so that we can be free to admire the private parts of others.

I know you're asking why I included this version of "She Bangs" when Ricky Martin's original masterwork works perfectly well. The answer is that in this cover, Hung (so very apropro, his name matched with this song) uses his sheer unmatched enthusiasm for music (and sex, since the two are equivalent) to elevate his only moderately-gifted voice to the realm of the heavenly. He uses his horniness (for the woman in the song and for his Latin American idol Ricky Martin) to give him the lips of an angel, for only an angel could sing with the passion Hung expertly displays.

From his album Inspiration, Hung states: "I may not be the best singer in the world, but I sing from my heart, and I sing with passion. I enjoy what I do. Not for money, not for fame--I just enjoy singing." And that's what it's all about, right? Passion. Passion for music, passion for sex, passion for Ricky Martin songs...it's all the same. Music can be the great eqivocator. It can be the meaning in our lives; it can be the inspiration.* Who cares about vocal talent, or restraint, or discipline, or taste, or semi-intelligent lyrics, when you can have the lovely lady lumps of Fergie and the the humps of Hung? Not I, said the fly. Heh...I said fly. See what I mean?