ARTIST: Fergie
TITLE: The Dutchess
LABEL: A&M
GENRE: Pop
BITRATE: 198kbps avg
PLAYTIME: 1h 08min total
RELEASE DATE: 2006-09-19
RIP DATE: 2006-09-12

Track List

01. Fergalicious (Feat. Will.i.am)  4:52
02. Clumsy                          4:01
03. All That I Got (The Make Up     4:05
Song) (Feat. Will.i.am)
04. London Bridge                   4:01
05. Pedestal                        3:22
06. Voodoo Doll                     4:23
07. Glamorous (Feat. Ludacris)      4:06
08. Here I Come                     3:21
09. Velvet                          4:53
10. Big Girls Don't Cry             4:28
11. Mary Jane Shoes (Feat. Rita     3:55
Marley And The I-Threes)
12. Losing My Ground                4:08
13. Finally                         4:53
14. Get Your Hands Up (Feat. The    3:33
Black Eyed Peas) (Bonus Track)
15. Wake Up (Bonus Track)           3:01
16. Paradise (Bonus Track)          7:41

Release Notes:

So what exactly does it mean if your "London Bridge wanna go down"?

"There are a couple things that you could relate with that title, but
I'm just going to leave it to people's imagination," Fergie said of
her possibly promiscuous hit single,

"London Bridge." "And that's all I'm going to say about that."

Apparently music fans have no problem with ambiguity, as the red-hot
track has climbed to #1 on the Hot 100 in just three weeks, the
second fastest ascent in Billboard history. (Amusingly enough, it
knocked out Nelly Furtado's not-so-ambiguous "Promiscuous.")

"It's funny, because I'm a singer and this single doesn't have a lot
of singing to it," Fergie said about the song. "It's more of a chanty
type of record, but it just seemed so obvious that it would be the
first single, because it was so strong and aggressive. I'm just
excited for people who hear the whole record, because there's going
to be a lot of different styles on the record. I have very eclectic
taste, just as the Black Eyed Peas do."

Fergie recorded The Dutchess, due September 19, while touring the
world with the Peas over the last year. Will.I.Am executive produced
and all the Peas make guest appearances, along with Ludacris, B Real
from Cypress Hill and Rita Marley, Bob Marley's widow.

"That was quite an honor for me," Fergie said of the "beautiful
reggae song" called "Mary Jane's Shoes" that she recorded with
Marley. "I kind of get to play Bob Marley in that song, which is a
beautiful thing."

Luda appears on a track called "Glamorous," produced by Polow Da Don
(he also helmed "London Bridge" and the Pussycat Dolls' "Buttons"),
while B Real raps on "Thriller Man," an homage to Cypress Hill's
"How I Could Just Kill a Man."

"It's pretty hot," B Real said. "Basically she took the song and
switched the story around to suit it to her and put the female touch
on it. She did the same chorus, she even did my same rhyme style,
but she sung it. It's hard to describe it, you just got to hear it ù
she did it justice."

"I'm going to get no publishing [royalties]," Fergie added with a
smile. "I used too many samples! But I love that kind of thing."

Fergie revealed that she has dreamed of doing a solo album since she
was a little girl and although several tracks on The Dutchess were
written recently, some date back as far as six years.

"I couldn't have written songs today that I wrote five years ago,
because I wasn't feeling that, so that's why I'm really excited
about this, because it's just a mixture of emotions on this record,"
she said. "And it's very autobiographical. All of the love songs are
definitely about different boyfriends that I've had. I've made a
personal decision to not mention which ones are about who, out of
respect for the people, but there are breakups, there are make-ups,
there are dysfunctional relationships. There are also struggles with
my substance abuse, a lot of vulnerability which I think people
haven't seen from me in the Black Eyed Peas."

Fergie is still finalizing the track list, narrowing down 21 songs
to 12 or 14, but whichever songs she picks, she is promising
variety.

"It's a very colorful album," she said. "There's dub, there's
reggae, there's stuff like the Temptations, a band that I saw when I
was 10 years old in concert. There's the low rider, oldie style that
we revisit that I was really inspired by in high school. There's
that punk-rock aspect ù that just really raw rock and roll, get your
hair messed up, sweat as much as you want, don't feel pretty onstage
ù that aspect. There's jazzy. We're just crazy."