The Black Eyed Peas – Boom Boom Pow
“Boom Boom Pow” is a song recorded by American group the Black Eyed Peas for their fifth studio album The E.N.D. (2009). It was written by group members will.i.am, apl.de.ap, Taboo and Fergie, being produced by will.i.am. The song features a vocal sample from the 1990 song “Reach Out” by British house duo Sweet Mercy featuring singer Rowetta.[3] It was released as the lead single from The E.N.D. on February 22, 2009, by Interscope Records.
“Boom Boom Pow” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 12 weeks, making it the group’s first number-one single on the chart. It is the second longest-running single to stay atop the chart in 2009, beaten only by their own “I Gotta Feeling“, which held the top spot for 14 consecutive weeks. The song also topped the charts in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, as well as reaching the top ten in more than 20 countries. It was ranked atop the Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart for 2009, at number seven on the decade-end chart for the 2000s,[4] and at number 51 on the all-time chart.[5] As of 2015, it has sold over six million units in the US.
Fergie had stated at an interview on The Insider that the music video would be shooting the week of March 8, 2009.[32] The making of the video was released by MTV on April 8.[33] In an interview to MTV, it was said that “… the concept of the video is the Peas’ birth into the digital afterlife,” Fergie said. “So the transformation is us going into a sort of birth or cocoon and coming out the other end as forms of energy. It’s a parallel to the music industry. Now everything is downloaded.” will.i.am stated that the video was inspired by how digital the world has become and hopes the video portrays “what it would be like if we were actually in the computer, if art was fused in it,” he said. “[It’s] analog life from a digital perspective. Becoming technology.”[34] The music video was directed by Mathew Cullen and Mark Kudsi. The video premiered on Dipdive on April 18, 2009, and was released on iTunes on April 24, 2009.[35] The video is set in the year of 3008, portraying “how it would be like if we actually lived in computers”. This concept was based in a line of the song, in which singer Fergie states “I’m so 3008 / You so 2000 and late”.
The video starts with Taboo flicking through pictures on a HP TouchSmart, he selects the image of a mushroom cloud. As the singing starts, images of computer icons, random computer code and some ASCII art of “THE END” are flashing in the background. The Black Eyed Peas are then seen singing their verses of the song. While this is happening, dancers are seen in striped zentai suits, dancing to the song, and negative images are turned into positive images; for instance, the explosion cloud turns into a tree swing, the grenade into a microphone, a gun into a trumpet and a nuclear waste barrel played as a drum. The video also features the face used on the album cover miming along to various lyrics; the face was designed as an amalgam of all four band members’ facial features. Much of the imagery in the video is a homage to Rebecca Allen‘s 1986 video for the Kraftwerk song “Musique Non Stop“.[36] The video was meant to go the full song but they cut it to 3:29. The video won a Grammy at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards in the category of Best Short Form Music Video. As of December 2023, the music video of the song scored over 472 million views on YouTube.
