After Cher, Jr. fucked up the National Anthem, I didn't see a bright musical future for Super Bowl 45. I was going to just mute, but got overruled.
Let me start by saying that there are Black Eyed Peas songs that I like. But not lately. Lately, they seem to have become a vortex of American pop culture on auto-flush, sampling things and remixing things that have only been out of the public senses for a few years. Not long enough. When you remix Dick Dale, and we all know it's only because Tarantino stuck his music in some movies, you bend the culture in an uncomfortable way.
I realize that the Peas in their current incarnation are a business calculation - a product designed to be mainstreamed and marketed to the widest mass of music-buying lifeforms, and that stealing hooks from other works and rapping - sort of - over them, is a tried and true formula, and people lap that shit up and shell out dough. That realization does not help me in dealing with the Peas, especially when they show up and yell their shit wearing Tron suits in the middle of the big game. I was sincerely wishing for an electrically based wardrobe malfunction that would suddenly kill them all, and take the absence of such as further proof of the non-existence of God. Slash was probably secretly thanking himself for the pre-game bump of heroin and counting dollar signs while the Neon High School Band formed arrows and hearts and shit on the field like a Robert Klein comedy nightmare.
Who is the worst of the Black Eyed Peas? Well, I used to like will.i.am, he's lefty, and has flow, except for, it seems, last night. He's a fashion guy, and was arguably the best thing about Wolverine: Origins. Fergie's a hottie, and can sing, but it's easy to forget both of those things when she screeches like a harpy from the 50 yard line. The fact that she was a Girl Scout and a champion speller go a long way towards redeeming her in my book. Then there's Applehead App-For-That, and if it weren't for singing shit in Tagalog, triumphing over being blind, and kicking the ass of a pretty hard life, I'd be inclined to hold his dumbass name against him. That leaves Taboo, the dancing rap ninja. He gets my vote.
Still, at least you can say that the NFL got what they paid for. Another lowest bidder triumph!