Patchwork of machines and emotions
Released in 2011, Just Can’t Get Enough portrays a brief emotional high that exists between two worlds, the delight of contact and the pain of absence. Just a week before the quake hit Japan, where Fergie, will. i. am and the rest of the band had recently spent time, the track was recorded. This instant gave the song a strange significance. It reverberated a delicate equilibrium between joy and sadness. Carried by a subdued synth riff, the electronic pulse produces a sense of weightless. Everything, even the agony, appears to float.
Masters of chart invasion were the Black Eyed Peas at the time. Every release became a public occasion. Their music played dancefloors, elevators, taxis, and kitchens. They slowed the tempo with Just Can’t Get Enough. The pressure arose from a beat that declines to erupt. Intimate, almost hushed, the lyrics open like a window in summer with the chorus. Warmth and a certain separation exist. The creation makes room for weakness.
Fergie’s voice is quite significant. She has a shaky edge, almost as though the words were taken right from a night of insomnia. Though she had already shown this skill on Big Girls Don’t Cry, here the emotion is more intertwined with the rhythm. Her wording rests rather than soars. The listener stays grounded, eyes wide open in the half-light; they do not get up. Each of her echo taboo, Apl de Apl and Will I Am adds a layer of introspection instead of interference.
The message is knowing that when you’re gone from somebody, especially when you’re on tour, you can’t get enough of them or you’re just thinking about them and you just want to let them know that you’re always there for them.
(Taboo, MTV News, 2011)
The simplicity of this song helps it to stand out. The composition is simple, the words are repetitive, the music nearly lullaby-like. Still, this simplicity holds something more. The synth arpeggios reflect the rhythmic pulsing of a thought that won’t leave. The song does not have too many things to say. Its recurrence transforms from a motto to a spell. That is the sound of one phrase at a time being held onto.
Just Can’t Get Enough started to permeate the pop fabric of the 2010s. It was played at transitional, waiting, and longing events. It did not try to overa whel. It set softly. It discovered strength in moderation in a decade fascinated by spectacle. For the Black Eyed Peas, it was a pause before a shift. One type of postcard from the border of their electro-pop domination. A song floating on feeling and grounded in its period.
