“London Bridge” by Fergie

As pointed out in the trivia section, Fergie is a singer who traces her musical breakthrough to running with the Black Eyed Peas. This is a band that has more or less mastered the art of putting together early-21st century dance songs. 

You can view the lyrics, alternate interprations and sheet music for Fergie's London Bridge at Lyrics.org.

So by this point in the game, she too was familiar with the formula that usually goes making into such tunes. For example, the featured narrative is situated in a club. Moreover, we have our standard admonishment to ‘all the girls’ in the venue in particular to get “drop it… real low”, i.e. dance provocatively. 

But one thing we will give the creators of this song credit for is that at least the thesis sentiment doesn’t center on encouraging listeners to dance per se, as these pieces usually tend to go. Rather this is, most simply put, a love song. 

And relatedly, the primary individual whom the vocalist is addressing would be the apple of her eye, i.e. this guy in the club whose presence causes her romantic defenses to “go down”. Or put more into layman’s terms, when Fergie is boozed and in the club and with a guy she particularly likes, it appears that she gets giddy and more to the point, excuse us to say, apparently sexually excited – for lack of a better term. 

So when she sings of her ‘London Bridge going down’, that’s a poetic way of putting forth that the narrator is highly susceptible, in this setting, to the romantic advances of the addressee.

Fergie, "London Bridge" Lyrics

Fergie, “London Bridge” and “The Dutchess”

This song is the lead single from Fergie’s debut album. This therefore makes “London Bridge” the first song in Fergie’s personal professional discography. Its release date, via A&M Records and the Will.i.am Music Group, was on 18 July 2006. And the name of the aforementioned album is “The Dutchess”.

Fergie is a nickname that, prior to being adopted by the singer, was more associated, via tabloid media use, with Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, who is in fact English. Moreover the term “dutchess”, as the aforenoted album is named, is a title related to royalty or nobility which, by the looks of things, is most heavily utilized in the United Kingdom. 

However Fergie, the singer, is actually an American from California. And prior to going solo, she made a name for herself as the female vocalist of the Black Eyed Peas on some of their biggest hits, such as 2003’s “Where Is the Love?“. However, she eventually departed from the group in 2016 though apparently left the door open for a potential return.

To note Sarah, Duchess of York of course picked up on the fact that Fergie was using her nickname. And understandably, people in the United States actually associate the name Fergie more with the singer than Ferguson herself, sometimes confusing the two actually. Sarah Ferguson went about capitalizing on the name-lifting by enlisting the singer to participate in one of her charity events. But it should be noted that Fergie, the singer’s own birth surname, as with the Duchess of York, is in fact Ferguson.

Credits for “London Bridge”

Fergie co-wrote “London Bridge” with three other writers. They are:

  • Sean Garrett
  • Mike Hartnett
  • Polow da Don

Polow da Don is a behind-the-scenes’ musician who was heavily active from the mid-aughts into the 2010s. He co-produced the track alongside Blac Elvis.

Additionally, Polow acts as a background vocalist on this song, as does Jay Anderson.

It has been noted that the production of this track relies on the sample of a song entitled “Down to the Nightclub”. This is a song that was released in the early 1970s by an old school band from Oakland called Tower of Power.

The Marc Webb-directed music video to “London Bridge” features cameos from Fergie’s Black Eyed Peas’ bandmates – Apl.de.ap, Taboo and Will.i.am. And as noted earlier, Will’s own label contributed to the issuance of this song.

Some More Cool Facts

“London Bridge” went on to be one of the greatest hits in Fergie’s catalog, achieving double-platinum status in the US and Japan (in the latter case being the tune’s ringtone). It also topped the Billboard Hot 100, reached number 3 on the UK Singles Chart and overall charted in approximately 25 nations.

The song contains a great deal of “sh-t”. Actually the offensive word “sh-t” is featured in the lyrics of this track over 30 times.

The lyrics featured in the chorus are based on the classic nursery rhyme “London Bridge is Falling Down”, which actually traces its origins back to the 18th century. But the melody of Fergie’s song is not based on the rhyme.

Besides for “London Bridge”, Fergie has personally dropped two other songs to date that were Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers. And those were 2007’s “Glamorous” featuring Ludacris and “Big Girls Don’t Cry”.

Fergie's "London Bridge"

1 Response

  1. JD says:

    It’s actually about cu*nil*ngus.

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