Yesterday

Three things first. One: I actually loved Where Is The Love? when it came out—genuinely loved it. Two: I had a thing for Fergie back then. Don’t ask why. Three: by I Gotta Feeling, I wanted to scrape it out of my brain with something sharp.

The Black Eyed Peas became the opposite of what they’d been—just the soundtrack to dying nightclubs, the song playing while bodies grind on floors that stopped being clean years ago, while everyone pretends they’re having fun when they’re really just trying not to think. Soulless. Hollow.

I couldn’t even bring myself to click on Yesterday, the new one without Fergie. They’d sunk so low in my mind that I would have tattooed myself with the name of any other forgettable pop star rather than hear another one of their songs. But I played it anyway, and what I heard was nothing like what I expected.