Like everyone else in the world who has had "Boom Boom Pow" punch its way into his/her ears, I assumed that the song came into being when, one day, Wil.i.am sawed open a pinball machine and dumped all the contents (along with a shredded DVD of Drumline) onto a mixing board. At that exact moment, Fergie stubbed her toe and started wailing in a way that sounded exactly like a broken Teddy Ruxpin doll drowning in a vat of molasses. Unfortunately someone was recording the whole thing, and thus"Boom Boom Pow" was born.
So it was surprising to learn (via Vulture) that there is a lawsuit alleging that actual human beings wrote "Boom Boom Pow"—or, rather, they wrote a song called "Boom Dynamite" that the Black Eyed Peas ripped off.
My clients [someone named Phoenix Phenom and her songwriter Manfred Mohr] submitted their copyrighted song “Boom Dynamite” to Interscope Records after Interscope had shown interest in some of their music, and the Black Eyed Peas later copied the song when they wrote “Boom Boom Pow.” A simple listening of the two songs will tell you that the songs are substantially similar, and that the hooks of the two songs are virtually identical in rhythm and lyrics.
Here's "Boom Dynamite."
(Obviously, you don't need a clip of "Boom Boom Pow" for comparison because it's all around us all the time, like McDonald's and staphylococcus.)
In listening to the two songs, you can't deny that both of them say "Boom" a lot. That, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is a fact. But, the Black Eyed Peas version says "boom" a lot and sounds like dropping a bunch of ball bearings on an arcade. Case closed.