Fergie - The Dutchess (Second Review)

[The Curmudgeon]

Well, this IS complicated. You may well be looking at the date of this review and scratching your head for a number of reasons. Reason 1 - you like to read all of my reviews and you're just SURE that I'd done this one before. Reason 2 - you're looking at the date of this review, August 2011, and you're wondering why the hell I'm only reviewing this terrible, terrible record now, a full five years since it was originally released, and a full four and a half years since anyone actually cared about it.

Here's the thing; I DID review this album (September 13, 2007, fact fans) but it, like so many of my reviews, was pulled by Amazon. No idea why. Offensive, shocking, libelous, too truthful - whatever. They removed it, and unlike the many other reviews that I simply re-post, this one just WOULD not get put back on the site. I changed some words, removed any potential "scandalous" words that might be blocking it.. but nothing. And so, obsessive completest that I am, I now have to resort to this. But hey, I have to. This IS the Official Room 101 of Amazon, people. Only the worst of the worst, remember. And if anyone deserves a place in here, it's Fergie. And if anything deserves a place in the bowels of Hell for eternity, it's this album.

So, the remainder of this review will be the original (pretty short) review from way back when. So, sit back and let me take you on a journey. The year was 2007. Chris Benoit managed to eliminate himself and his family from the Royal Rumble of life, the writer's strike in America caused about 1000 heart-attacks in TV networks and Dr Thomas Light was awarded the Nobel Prize for creating The Robot Master. A grand year. And the very same year I said these words about Fergie's album, The Dutchess:

Hey, here's a crazy fact you might not have caught up on: did you know that Fergie, singer with the once relevant Black Eyed Peas, is a rather attractive girl? You did? Well, too bad - because THAT fact is going to be rammed down your throat until you can almost smell the botox injections.

Fergie, then. Seems to think that an album of lame hip-hop posturing and wigga gangsta slang (first single "London Bridge" sums up the entire album in the first sentence - "it's me, Fergie - the pimp") is just what the people want - and if it isn't? Never mind - look at her! Isn't she just BEAUTIFUL?

The next single, the utterly atrocious "Fergalicious" informs us that she's SO hot that guys jerk off over her pictures, and that we line up round the block to see what she's got. Oh, and she's down in the gym "working on her fitness". No mention of the visits to the bathroom with her fingers down her throat, or off for some more plastic surgery. Maybe those cuts will be B-sides.

And let's have a nice, long, hearty laugh at "Glamorous", which is basically "I'm Still Fergie From The Block", where she informs us that even though she sells records and appears in movies (erm, really?) she still lines up for McDonalds because she's still like you and me. But really, really pretty too. Don't forget that part.

All in all, its another boring, bling-obsessed piece of garbage from someone else who has nothing to say or offer, but is lapped up by the hip-hop hypnotised MTV generation who think this vacuous, money-hungry idiot is someone to aspire to be. Pitiful.

[trashcanman]

"Chris Benoit managed to eliminate himself and his family from the Royal Rumble of life".

BWAHAHAHAH, er I mean TOO SOOOOON!!!

God what a pile of shit, this album is. And the fact that the artists who generated Fergalicious, JJ Fad, got NOT A FUCKING PENNY and are actually facing foreclosure on their homes while this talentless whore and her pimp makes millions simply by by changing the lyrics to their song (to submoronic self-congratulatory drivel). You know, if I respected an artist enough to rip off their song, I'd make fucking sure that they got their cut rather than let them die in the gutter. That's just common decency.

[The Curmudgeon]

I didn't know that either. Y'know, make as many horrible pop records as you like, but at least have some sense of what's right and wrong, and watching the people who, let's face it, made the fucking song that made YOU money, watching them go broke.. Jeez, I often wondered if I was right to hate Fergie and B.E.P so much. Turns out I was right after all.

See, that's something else I could have put in there if I was reviewing it now. But Amazon STILL won't put it up there. I even changed the format of the album I'm reviewing, so it's not the same album (it's the "Deluxe Version", whatever that is). And still nothing. I've never had so much trouble with one review before.

I actually Wikipedia'd 2007 to see what things I could talk about (it's a bit of a steal from flashback episodes of the Simpsons, to be honest; "the year was 1991.."), and talking about Benoit and, er, a Mega Man game that was set in the far off distant future of 2007 seemed like a good enough idea.