If by now you haven't listened to and watched the video for the song "Friday" by 13 year old American singer Rebecca Black then you, my friend, are what we call "out of the loop". Part of me wishes to apologise for what you are about to experience, but it's necessary:
This video went viral last (haha) Friday, March 11th. It's been a while since something that wasn't either purposefully hilarious or Lady GaGa related went full blown viral; and in less than a week it's gained close to 13 million views on YouTube. Why?
Everyone can tell you - it's bloody awful. It has received a universal bludgeoning. Within a week, the song has become the internet's favourite whipping boy (or girl...). I have literally yet to meet a single person who hasn't described it as the worst song they have ever heard. It has been verbally raped. Everywhere.
Now, I don't just want to spend a whole post ranting about the obviously crap things - that devilishly inane chorus, the single stupidest lyric ever in the bridge, the autotune poured on as thick as concrete on Chernobyl. Despite it being a vacuous modern pop husk and the fact that the world's greatest hope is to simply ignore it and hope it goes away, the song and video reveal some tragic truths about how pop music works today.
One of the biggest problems with pop music over the last couple of years is the way that it presents kids at a really immature age (about 12 to 15) with all these ideas about "partying" and being "in the club". I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen 14 year olds dolled up like Bratz dolls on smack, singing and gyrating along to Flo Rida like a bunch of orange, ugg boot wearing marionettes. Now I'm nowhere near saying that Rebecca Black's godless refrain of "partyin', partyin', YEAH!" has propelled a generation of youngsters into a sordid pit of moral abandon, but when someone somewhere thought it was a legitimate idea to have a 13 year old sing that, it proves that, in some way, things have reached rock bottom.
Kids that age have never been in a club! They haven't even been to parties that aren't supervised by mothers voraciously handing out overwhelming amounts of Wotsits and those little biscuits shaped like fish. And yet in this video, you've got a 13 year old and her friends DRIVING A FRIGGING CONVERTIBLE. Then she turns up at some party where all her pre-teen friends are dressed up like slags (with braces) and there are massive, shiny 4x4s parked outside, seemingly being supervised by a bunch of pre-pubescent little waifs whose balls have very low prospects for dropping in the near future. I mean, watch the video and look at the guy she talks to at 1:43-44. Really?
A whole movement of pop songs over the last several years have accelerated the unhealthy preoccupation that kids have with behaving like adults nowadays. They're presented with an adult world and told "this is what you guys should want". They don't know how to deal with it. They're nowhere near ready! They have no idea who they are, and yet they're suddenly surrounded by this inescapable philosophy of waht you should act like, dress like and talk like. Those songs have always been sung by older artists, they just end up marketed at kids and young teenagers. This however is something different. This is actually a kid releasing the track. I hope that the sensory perceptions of even the most repugnant 13 year old can work out that this song is bloody awful, and so this won't inspire kids to think that their fantasies of spending the whole weekend (including Friday) partying are any more attainable. But someone, somewhere thought that it would. Record label bosses somewhere think that the market for pushing adult material (and it doesn't have to be porn to be classed as adult material) onto kids is at a point where it can be exploited at the next level. This may very well not be the last we hear of Rebecca Black. And if the internet achieves the (clearly laudible) feat of destroying the career of a doe-eyed 13 year old girl, there will soon be another on to take her place.
I'm sure plenty of you are going to say "dude, you're reading way too much into this". Maybe. I'm also sure plenty of people are going to say "well, why should I care? Just get on with life!" Maybe. This song's already gone viral and has also already broken the iTunes Top 100. Any popularity it gains however, I think will be purely for ironic amusement. Something of a reverse "Rage Against the X Factor". It's not going to have a sincere cultural impact. But the fact that someone, somewhere thought this was a good idea, that creating a younger, female Justin Bieber (she's been called that as an insult and a compliment) was an appropriate business move, has me worried. And not just because it's sodding awful.
And what's the deal with the middle aged guy rapping, checking his watch and driving along? He's not even with the kids at the party. What the hell is he doing? Going to pick them up I imagine. What a douche.
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