Girl band lyrics can often be mystifyingly stupid - famously, All Saints indicated on 'Never Ever' that they didn't understand that "either way" suggests only two alternative options. In the case of 'Bootylicious', I've always been confused by what exactly "this" thing is that Kelly, Michelle and Beyonce were struggling to handle. I would have thought that it's the Destiny's Child threesome that us gents can't handle, but the song is unclear about who and what exactly can't be handled. And god knows what "I don't think you're ready for this jelly" means.
Moronic lyrics aside, 'Bootylicious' was a wonderful, early Noughties-sounding piece of fresh pop. That it was kept off the top of the charts by Atomic Kitten's awful cover of The Bangles was a travesty, but following on from two consecutive #1s ('Independent Woman Part 1' and 'Survivor'), it saw the group at the peak of their powers. Subsequent releases never matched up to the glitz of 'Bootylicious' and as we all know, Beyonce experienced more success after going solo than she was ever likely to achieve had DC continued down the same well-worn path. 'Survivor', the album from which this was taken, still stands up to repeat listens almost a decade on, but the signs were already there that Kelly and Michelle would need to be jettisoned - 'Bootylicious' is all about Beyonce's vocal lead. The delivery of lines such as "read my lips carefully if you like what you see, move, groove, prove you can hang with me" were delivered with an assured self-confidence of a pop star about to go stratospheric.
Still, I'm left wondering what flavour of jelly they were talking about.
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