Fergie: Woman of the Year

Blender’s night with Fergie has only begun. The first bottle of wine has not been uncorked, nor has the first insult. We’ve asked our first question, and it’s an innocuous one, the investigative equivalent of a hello handshake.But, already, we’ve made Fergie cry.

So, how do you feel about being named Blender’s Woman of the Year?
It feels like such an accomplishment. I’ve been working in this industry since I was 7, and I’m finally being commended for those years. And — [sniffles] I can’t believe you made me cry. I’m so embarrassed. And I’m fucking up my eyeliner.

It’s the one time Blender will make Fergie cry — though we will come close a second time, before we say good-bye — but it’s only the start of the drama. There will be teasing, more swearing, shouting, violations of California’s open-container laws, taxicab-level confessions, even some making out (unfortunately, not with Blender).

Which could make you wonder if our Woman of the Year also deserves to be crowned Total Freaking Wingnut. Before 2007, she just seemed like a highly styled cheerleader who’d carelessly overbronzed. Sure, the Black Eyed Peas were huge; Will.i.am, the Pea brain, cowrote and produced the songs, and Fergie was the humps. And humps don’t get much respect.

Then her solo album, The Dutchess, came out in September 2006 and launched a giddy No. 1 hit (“London Bridge”), followed by another (“Fergalicious”), followed by another (“Glamorous”). In July 2007, she released “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” which was like the moment in a movie when the librarian takes off her glasses and turns out to be sexy, only in reverse: It’s the kind of earnest ballad that wins Grammy credibility, and Fergie proved the seriousness of her intent by not S-P-E-double-L-I-N-G a single W-O-R-to-the-D.

So she’s entitled to be emotional beyond what would seem normal. Stacy Ann Ferguson became a solo star the year she turned 32, but she’s more like 86 in showbiz years. Drugs, rejection, desperation, children’s TV — all manifest as lines on her face, and every hit single feels like validation to her. She’s excitable, quickly familiar, the I’m-crying-because-I’m-so-happy type. She’s the stray who wins the Westminster Kennel award: No matter how many records she sells, she’ll always feel like an underdog.

“I might not be the most talented person in the world,” she explains. “I might not have the best voice. I might not be the prettiest or the best dancer. But I’ve worked very hard, and I’ve gone through humiliation. That’s why winning an award means so much more to me than it does to other people.” And she wipes away tears.

We’re in a private dining room at a restaurant in Hollywood, a few hours before Fergie flies to Mexico City to resume a worldwide Black Eyed Peas tour that includes South America, Africa and Asia. An assistant has told her there’s a surprise waiting outside after dinner. “What is the surprise?” Fergie asks girlishly, impatiently. “Am I being Punk’d?”

“I’m trying to be healthy,” she tells the waitress, but soon, the table is crowded with plates: curry burgers, garlic fries, mashed potatoes. “You are bad,” she chides Blender. “But you’re a fun date.” It’s flattering, but to be honest, it isn’t hard to persuade Stacy Ferguson to yield to temptation.

If you look online, you can find photos from a 2005 concert where she turned into a Black Eyed Pee, pissing herself onstage and leaving a telltale crotch stain on her tan clam-diggers, and YouTube clips from her childhood stint on Kids Incorporated, when she sang a Lionel Richie song to a clown or chirped “We Built This City” while wearing a red space suit.

Do you ever wish you’d been a star in the days before the Internet destroyed celebrity mystique?
At this point, no. People put celebrities on a pedestal and act like they’re perfect. But I’m more like the people’s artist — the same way Diana was “the people’s princess.” I’m a little more human than other artists. I’m not afraid to show my flaws and have a laugh about it.

So people can relate to you. They see what you’ve been through, and they think, Oh, I’ve had a bad day like that, too.
You have?

Well, no, I haven’t peed myself onstage.
You haven’t had to go straight onstage after being late for a show, then jumped up and down while singing “Let’s Get Retarded.” OK, motherfucker? I was late, so I didn’t go to the restroom before I went onstage. It was horrible. But, whatever. It happened.

She refers to “London Bridge” as “dumb” and “stupid,” and it’s clear she means those insults as endorsements. Its less intelligent cousin, “My Humps,” has been mocked more than any hit single since “Macarena,” mostly for its lack of lyrical sophistication.

 “I thought it was brilliant, hilarious,” Fergie says. “My whole inspiration for that song was [’80s rapper] Roxanne Shanté and the way she bragged. Obviously, I don’t have the biggest ass in the world.”

Her crackling hit singles — audacious and absurd, silly and sentimental — nearly bust with an adoration of early hip-hop: The car-bomb beats, the playground hooks, the unabashed boasts and taunts all evoke rap’s carefree childhood. When she sings, “A girl like me don’t stay single for long” and gloats that men “get their pleasures from my photo,” it can seem like she’s full of herself. To her, it’s a comedic role. “You know, I’m not really feeling myself all that much,” she says, laughing. “Those songs are about my persona, the larger-than-life Fergalicious. It’s a part of me, but expanded. It’s very sexual, and I am a very sexual person, behind closed doors. I’m a freak. That’s the part of my personality I’m playing with in those songs: flirty, sexual, but not promiscuous. I’m basically a tease — take it or leave it.”

“She’s a girl — she cries at Grey’s Anatomy,” says bandmate Will.i.am. “Offstage, she’s got a vagina, but onstage, she transforms. She’s grown balls — she had to. She’s got bigger balls than a dude.”

Not everyone shares Fergie’s (or Blender’s) regard for the audacious and silly, and all through the year Internet message boards filled up with vows of hatred for her. Even her own father said “London Bridge” was “the worst song he’d ever heard in his life.” Thanks, Dad! “People either love me or hate me,” Fergie muses. “I’d like to meet the people who really hate me — I bet we’d get along if we hung out.”

“My Humps” was covered with mock somberness by Alanis Morissette, but it was sung more memorably by Will Ferrell while on a treadmill in Blades of Glory. “I think he did it better than I do,” Fergie chirps. “I think people are starting to get the joke now. ‘Oh, she’s kidding.’ Yes, I’m kidding!”