Will.i.am has revealed that U2 were the inspiration behind Black Eyed Peas‘ hit song ‘I Gotta Feeling’, with the musician saying he “wrote the chorus for them”.
While appearing as a guest on Nile Rodgers‘ Deep Hidden Meaning on Apple Music 1 last weekend, the ‘Let’s Get It Started’ hitmaker opened up about the creation behind the group’s 2009 track.
“David Guetta had this song called ‘Love Is Gone’… So he sends me the remix to ‘Love Is Gone’ and that is the beat to ‘I Gotta Feeling’,” he recalled. “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?’”
He continued: “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 UK.
“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, wrote it from the perspective of Maurice White and then the Talking Heads’ ‘Psycho Killer’. And so that “Psycho Killer qu’est-ce que c’est?“. Let me borrow that. Let me use that math.”
‘I Gotta Feeling’ was the second single from the group’s 2009 LP ‘The E.N.D’. The track debuted at Number Two on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, behind their previous song ‘Boom Boom Pow’, making the group one of 11 artists who have occupied the top two positions of the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. ‘I Gotta Feeling’ spent 14 consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, making it the longest-running Number One single of 2009.
The track was nominated for Record Of The Year at the 2010 Grammy Awards and won the Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. As of June 2019, the song has sold over nine million downloads in the US and held the record as the most downloaded song on the iTunes Store of all time, making it the highest-selling digital non-charity single in the US ever.
In other news, U2 recently announced that they will be releasing the ‘Zoo TV – Live In Dublin’ EP from 1993.
