Fergie - 'Big Girls Don't Cry'
Upon listening to the Fergie album recently, an interesting proposition struck me, for a noughties update of the Pepsi Challenge. Now, for those of you young enough not to know what I'm talking about, the Pepsi Challenge was a blind test of cola drinks to see if people could tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke without the help of labels. It was huge in the '80s, I swear.
Anyway, it goes like this...I wander around the streets with an MP3 player and play you an earnest song by a young lady, talking about how being sassy and alternative isn't all it's cracked up to be, and don't you know she had a difficult childhood and is still dealing with a complicated personal life, and sometimes she just wants to curl up with a blanket and a stuffed animal and cry fat, hot emo tears. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out whether the singer is Fergie or Pink. On their most recent albums, there are umpteen songs I could pick that would suit this test, and on some they sound so downright similar it's uncanny.
'Big Girls Don't Cry' (and before anyone asks, it is sadly not a cover of the classic Four Seasons track from the 1960s) is perhaps not the most obvious example of this on the album (that would have to be 'Losing My Ground'), but it's still so un-Fergie-like as to be almost unrecognisable. There's no big honking sense of overproduction, no impenetrable sexual metaphors - there isn't even a spelling lesson in there.
Instead we've got a stripped down, soulful semi-acoustic number where Fergie Ferg gets all introspective on us and wants to work out her personal issues (better get out the lawn chairs, then). Heck, even the video is low-key: just Fergie jammin' with a band and, in an impressive piece of cross-promotion, getting all close and snoggy with Milo Ventimiglia from Heroes, the lucky thing.
This is a song of two halves - the verses are rather sedate and Vanessa Carlton-y, and to be perfectly honest, a little bit indulgent. The sort of thing that you'd sway and tap your feet to if it was open mic night at a country and western bar, but, to my personal taste, too navel-gazing for a pop song. The chorus is a different case, though - it's more stirring and has more of a hook, even if the sentiment behind it is all still pretty saccharine. It's a hug-your-knees kind of song, really - she's in fine vocal form throughout, and it's lovely in the right time and place, but really that place is on the album and not being a single in its own right.
And because I like to include a selfish demand to the artist relating to his or her release schedule whenever I can, I shall end by saying this.
Dear Fergie, if you finish the promotional campaign for this album without releasing 'Clumsy', I'm going to have to hurt you. Fondly yours, Steven.
Download: Out now
CD Released: July 9th
(Steve Perkins)
Comments
absolutely love it! gr8 song and wkd gurl!
I love Heroes and I love him :| Fergie who? The individual pieces of this song are fine.. but put together they bore me =/
This song's OK, but you're right, she really does need to release Clumsy. And Mary Jane Shoes!
i think fergie rocks i heard her on diana concert and thinks shes awsome even though her mic wozn wrkin at 1st
I Lv dA NeW SoNg ItZ dEd gUd I LV iT bUt bIg gUrLz dO CrY Im a bIG gUrL Ad i CrY lV Ya lV BeKa xxxxxxxxxxx
hello i like fergies new song because it is better than the rest of the songs
[What better reason do you need? - Fraser]
Not a fan of the song but the vid has that guy who plays Peter in Heroes in it :D :D Just press mute :P
I'm really not a fergie fan but I really like this song and is presently one of my favourites. It is very different and I love the video and not just because it features the hot Milo Ventimiglia but it's interesting and tells I story. It is very different from her other stuff and I plan on buying the single siimply because all the other songs are just rubbish this song however i really love!
I love the song! It isn't like the other songs that Fergie has done before.