Black Eyed Peas – ‘The Time (Dirty Bit)’

Guest post by Mark Di Stefano

Sometimes I lay awake at night wrestling with the nagging question: What will Cargo Bar in Sydney play at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve? I do this because Cargo Bar has the clientele that sucks up the best of the Nova Hot Hits and the worst of Sydney’s electro industry and mashes them together. For example; The Potbelleez.

So what Cargo plays at the stroke of midnight on New Decade’s Eve (that’s right we are about to enter a new decade… there was no 0 A.D after all), is a good litmus of where we are going as a society and as a music scene. It will be on your unemployed Dad’s iPod and on the opening titles of Masterchef. It will get both the 16 year old boys with fakies and the 35 year old women who silence their uteral ticking clock with said 16 year old cock, jumping.

Last year it was the David Guetta and will.i.am collaboration ‘I Gotta Feeling’ and this year, you can expect the song bringing in the fireworks will be the travesty, ‘The Time (Dirty Bit)’. If you fancy a flutter, a good each way bet is also Katy Perry’s recently blogged-about pop anthem, ‘Firework’.

It’s a travesty because the Black Eyed Peas were once great and if any band has imploded more in a decade than Green Day, it’s the BEP. If you pick up their 1998 release, Behind the Front, you’ll discover a talented three piece putting out latino inspired r’n’b/house. But then scoot through the years and you’ll slowly fall into a swelling pit of will.i.am’s ego. There was the greatness of their pure pop, ‘Request Line’, the tepid introduction of Fergie with ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart’ and the vein bursting clusterfuck, ‘Imma Be’.

Further, BEP have turned the process of pop into a DJ delivery service. The heavy “dirty bit” in the song, will be at every big festival and in every dingy rave cave. Gone are the days at the start of the decade when an aspiring musician with a catchy song could get on the radio. Now you need a song that will play well at a seedy nightclub, make the Ministry of Sound Annual and is ready to be Jamster-fied. Like a G6, we are entering the next decade led by this cold, bleeping robotic mess.

To drive my point home – that this song is pure tripe – I only present it as evidence. The body of the song is a cover of Dirty Dancing’s uplifting “I’ve Had the Time of My Life”. That’s right, it’s a cover! It’s not a sample. That would be slightly more tactful. The chorus is literally the hook to the ballad, with a synth behind it. There you go kids, money really does make you lazy. Meanwhile what a “dirty bit” is may be left open to interpretation. I’m suggesting it is literally the dirty bit in the song…. dirty bit being the call and the deadmau5 -inspired beat the response.

So at 11:58pm, when the Jessica Mauboy and Ludacris’ collab dwindles, and the guys with white leather shoes and the women with halterneck tops start calling for Freefallin’ by Zoe Badwi…stop and remember this, Welcome to the TEN-ees. Welcome to a decade of bass line pop songs, nonsensical rips from the 70s and 80s and bands becoming DJs. You may as well grab this baby now before she begins to ovulate.

Black Eyed Peas – ‘The Time (Dirty Bit)’

Incidentally, the video should give you a great idea of what I’m talking about:

PS: We like Mark because he has very strong opinions. He’s shared them before with us here and we reckon that deep down he actually loses his shit to this song. Make extra sure by monitoring his progress over here.