Black Eyed Peas

The Black Eyed Peas have many genres, including hip-hop, pop, and dance-pop, but one genre that doesn’t really come to mind is romantic. One song that has all the characteristics of romantic poetry is Where is the Love?

In Where is the Love,  the artists of the song talk about all the struggles in the world and how they can be solved with just a little love. Throughout this song they use imagination, they use strong emotions, have interest in the common man and childhood, celebrate the individual, and have awe in nature. The lyrics “Nations droppin' bombs” and “Chemical gasses fillin' lungs of little ones” shows not only imagination but strong emotion too. It gives you such detail of what’s going on that it makes you imagine those things that are happening in the world. Doesn’t it give you so much grief just to think about it? What really shows the interest in childhood are the lines “Negative images is the main criteria, infecting the young minds faster than bacteria, kids wanna act like what they see in the cinema.” These lyrics talk out how the negative images that children see in the world is causing them to become corrupted, and later it says we can stop it by spreading love.

Celebration of the individual may not seem apparent, but it is there. Some lyrics that show it are, “Yo', whatever happened to the values of humanity, Whatever happened to the fairness and equality, Instead of spreading love we're spreading animosity, lack of understanding, leading us away from unity.” While this may be taken as criticism of humanity it actually celebrates it too. It talks about how we used to all these good things and all we need to do is understand each other and we will stop spreading hate. Also when it states “Man, you gotta have love just to set it straight” it shows us that all a person needs to do is love and it will fix the problems we have caused. It shows that one person can help change the world for better if the spread love.

We can also see the influence of nature in the song. While it doesn’t go into incredible detail about flowers or trees it does go into detail about our world. It talks about how we only have “One world, one world (That's all we got), One world, one world.” By saying this it’s in awe of nature because it's the only thing keeping us alive and we can’t destroy it with our hate.
William Blake is a specific romantic poet that we think would probably relate to the song. He wanted to create social change in the world in the minds of the people. He wanted to "spread the love" too.

The Black Eyed Peas embody all of the aspects of romantic poetry from the industrial revolution because they are criticizing our way of life and making us feel something within the song.