Will.i.am has revealed Black Eyed Peas hit “I Gotta Feeling” is inspired by U2.
The 2009 earworm started life as a beat DJ David Guetta sent Will, who was working on U2’s album “Line On The Horizon.” It was penned as a response to the Irish rockers’ 2000 classic “Beautiful Day.”
“David Guetta had this song called ‘Love is Gone,’ so he sent me the remix, which was the beat to ‘I Gotta Feeling,'” he explained. “I approached it like, ‘Ok if I could approach the chorus, what would Earth, Wind & Fire do? What would U2 do? What would Talking Heads do all at the same time?’ The chorus is like an Earth, Wind & Fire type of vibe — it’s very Maurice White. Then the ‘Woo-hoo’ is very Bono, U2. As a matter of fact, I wrote the chorus for U2 because at the time, I was working on [U2’s 2009 album] ‘No Line On The Horizon’ at Olympic Studios in the U.K.”
“At the time, ‘Beautiful Day’ was like, ‘Oh man, if they have another song like ‘Beautiful Day,’ that’d be awesome. And so I did ‘I gotta feeling that tonight’s going to be a good night’ as a response to that. I wrote it from the perspective of Maurice White and then the Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer,'” he said.
“And so that ‘Psycho Killer’ qu’est-ce que c’est? Let me borrow that. Let me use that math,” he recalled, speaking to Nile Rodgers for Apple Music 1’s “Deep Hidden Meaning.”
The “Where is the Love?” hitmaker also recalled Usher’s team getting in touch to write him an “international hit” — which ended up being 2010’s club banger “OMG.”
“I get a call from Usher’s A and R, Mark Pitts, and he’s like, ‘Yo, Will, I need a hit. I need a hit for Usher.’ I’m like, ‘What type of hit?’ I mean, that’s so vague. He’s like, “International hit.” I’m, like, ‘What type of international, though? Like London, Paris or everywhere?’ He was, like, ‘Yo, just give me that international, what you’re calling international.’ I’m going to take the ‘Boom Boom Pow’ drums but do four-to-the-floor. Then learning from [band] Violent Femmes where you’re singing the bassline, that’s going to be my verse,” he relayed.
The full interview will be available on Aug. 10, 2 p.m. BST at apple.co/_DHMRadio.
