It's Fergie's birthday! To celebrate her life we look back at her solo and Black Eyed Peas career for her five best lyrics.
ADVERTISEMENT27 March 1975: Fergie is born.
Where would music be without Stacy Ann "Fergie" Ferguson? In a much worse place, let’s be real.
Born on this day in 1975, Fergie grew up in California and got her start at just nine years’ old voicing Sally for two Peanuts cartoons.
Fergie’s music career got started with the girl group Wild Orchid, formed from the actors in children’s TV show Kids Incorporated. Still known as Stacy Fergusson at this point, Wild Orchid released three albums between 1997 and 2001.
It was a fateful meeting in 2001 with the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am that sealed her future. Fergie asked the rapper to produce her solo album but ended up joining the Black Eyed Peas as an official member after featuring on their 2003 album ‘Elephunk’.
Fergie’s placement in the Black Eyed Peas helped the rap group reach a new level of commercial success. In 2006, she finally released her first solo album ‘The Dutchess’. She stayed with the Black Eyed Peas until departing in 2017 for her second solo album ‘Double Dutchess’.
To celebrate Fergie’s birthday, here are our top 5 lyrics from everyone’s favourite Black Eyed Pea.
1. “La-da-dee-da-da-dee-da” - 'Pump It'
On the opening track of the Black Eyed Peas second album ‘Monkey Business’ with Fergie on board, in the opening of her verse, Fergie managed to make the most impactful moment of the song.
Fergie singing her iconic note-line on 2005’s ‘Pump It’ will go down in musical history as the best way to announce yourself.
2. “Fergalicious, definition make them boys go loco” - 'Fergalicious'
Talk about announcing yourself... And who’s ever come up with a more creative way to play on their name, beyond ex-bandmate will.i.am’s bastardisation of the name William?
The real genius in 'Fergalicious' isn’t this single line. It’s all the other words Fergie has found to rhyme with her Shakespearian take on her moniker. Delicious, promiscuous, suspicious, fictitious, kisses, vicious, fitness, and witness all take turns to rhyme with “Fergalicious”.
3. “How come every time you come around; My London, London Bridge wanna go down? - 'London Bridge'
One of Fergie and the Black Eyed Peas’ great skills was to reappropriate classic songs and bring them into a future no one asked for. See, for example, the unconscionably awful ‘The Time (Dirty Bit)’ and its use of ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of my Life’.
On solo tune ‘London Bridge’, Fergie takes on English nursery rhyme ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’ and, seemingly inspired by a trip to the UK’s capital, repurposes it to be about fellatio. Genius.
4. “I'm so three thousand and eight; You so two thousand and late” - 'Boom Boom Pow'
No one was ready for the lead single of the Black Eyed Peas’ fifth album 2009’s ‘The E.N.D.’ Music still hasn’t recovered from the way the band incorporated electronic pop into R&B. Perhaps it never will.
What’s more certain, is on lead single ‘Boom Boom Pow’, Fergie delivers a put-down which will not be bested this side of the 21st century. Scorching.
5. The entirety of ‘My Humps’
For anyone doubting Fergie as the definitive voice of feminism in the 2000s, they just need to hear the lyrics to 2005’s ‘My Humps’. On this sultry track, Fergie takes her rightful place as the leading voice of the Black Eyed Peas.
Has anyone owned their body as forthrightly as Fergie as she sings “I'ma make, make, make, make, you work; Make you work, work, make you work” to the male members’ endless questions about what she’s doing with her “lovely lady lumps”?
