New Fergie Album? Will.i.am Says the Dutchess Has Plenty of Songs

Last year this month, Black Eyed Pea Fergie released her now-double-platinum solo album The Dutchess, and she hasn't exactly taken a breather since. MTV News reports that she just shot a clip for "Clumsy," and fellow Pea Will.i.am, who executive produced her LP, tells Rock Daily they're well on their way to album number two. "It's already half done," Will.i.am says. "If [label head] Jimmy Iovine said, 'Will, I need a Fergie record, turn it into me next week.' I'd have it." (Apparently Fergie nixed the idea of getting it in stores for Christmas: "Would have been dope though," Will laments).

So how exactly does a Fergie album come together? "When I record, I like to record fifty songs," the producer, who's also currently working in the studio with Michael Jackson, explains. "For Fergie's record it's like, okay, we need two songs that are like 'Fergilicious.' We need two songs that are like 'Glamorous' for balance. We need two songs that are like 'Big Girls Don't Cry.' You can't have too much of the same shit. You're gonna be sitting on great songs, it's just that for diversity, you've got to make cuts." With all the Fergie in the hopper, does Will.i.am ever worry that older tracks might seem stale? "What's stale to me is fresh to you," he quips and launches into a condemnation of artists who turn their backs on stellar material. "You could be sitting on great things and because you're tired of it you don't put it out. I know a lot of artists that are like, 'I just don't like that song no more.' Fool! You're an idiot, that song is dope. Their new shit is doo-doo, that shit is wack, and they just like it 'cause it's new. You don't ever want to like something just 'cause it's new."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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