The Black Eyed Peas – Where Is The Love? – YouTube
The song “Where is the love?” by The Black Eyed Peas primarily exemplifies the theme regarding human rights through the relationship between the individual and society. In their song, The Black Eyed Peas describe many of the tragedies constantly occurring throughout the world. These tragedies include violence both domestically and internationally. They describe “nations dropping bombs,” “children hurt,”and “people killing, people dying.” They cite the lack of love throughout the world as the cause of these pitfalls. For example one section of a verse argues, “if you only have love for your own race then you only leave space to discriminate and to discriminate only generates hate.” This verse implies that to achieve a perfect society or to at least overcome the pitfalls of society, love for one another must come to the forefront of human relations. This would in turn end the cycle of violence and pain inflicted by humans on one another throughout the world.
They also place blame on the overwhelming desire by individuals to make money without care for others. Further, they state that the world was not always this way and in order to return to a more “utopian” society we must abandon greed and turn away from the negative images and wrong information produced by the media. Ultimately, their song exemplifies their desire to return to a world with fairness, equality, and humanity. In other words, “instead of spreading love, we’re spreading animosity.”
Nice song Laila! As fun as “My Humps” is–this song is a lot more meaningful. The song definitely sweeps you up in its feeling. And it all as true today as in 2003. I like the question mark campaign depicted in the video. I guess this would be one of those approaches to creating a utopia that says the we should change ourselves to change the world: definitely tends toward “utopia of virtue” rather than “utopia of organization.”
Great song! You mentioned how these tragedies all over the world happened and it is because of a “lack of love”. Do you think that if there wasn’t this “lack of love” these tragedies would still occur?
The singer is clearly a dystopian protagonist in this song. He is aware of the evil “wrongs” that exist in his world (terrorism, violent gangs, discrimination, weapons of war, an absence of respect) and he questions existing social and political systems. There is definitely a sense of entrapment and he is seeking to escape. For him, the answer involves God– repeatedly calling on his Father (“Father, Father, Father help us”) for some guidance, comfort, and love.
The song makes me think about the perfect world that I imagined when I was young. Just thinking that the world was all-good. But clearly, as I grew up, I see all the bad things that happened in the world. It has a correlation the the song that I posted — Paradise by Coldplay, because it referenced the innocence and positivity that we were once promised as a child.
I love that the song stresses heavily on the common humanity that we all possess, which if we started to place our focus on this common humanity, we all would naturally learn to live in peace and harmony. Great song!