Ok, this is something that's been bugging me for a while.
In case you have no idea who Rebecca Black is, let me sum up the story for you:
14 year old girl has a single and music video produced by a 'vanity publisher'. Video ends up on Youtube. Video goes viral as 'the worst song ever'. Shit hits fan.
If you've never seen the video, here it is:
Now, first, let me address the controversy. Black has apparently been pulled out of school due to bullying and has recieved 'death threats'.
Rebecca Black has never recieved a death threat. What she has recieved is a bunch of youtube comments by idiot kids along the lines of "zomg ur video is so terable if i see u in the street ill run u ova wit my car"... and the traditional media, who apparently have no idea what the internet is like, have grabbed that with both hands because it makes the story more sensational.
As for the bullying? Well...probably, but it's not anything really out of the ordinary. I remember highschool. Highschool is all about trying to be as average as possible. If you're too intelligent, you're a nerd, not intelligent enough, you're thick...in other words, if you do anything that places you outside the norm, you're going to get bullied and made fun of.
I guarantee that there are twenty or thirty other kids in Rebecca Black's old school who are facing exactly the same level of bullying because their parents are poor, or because they suck at sports or because they're the first (or last) in their year to start developing breasts...but that doesn't exactly warrant a news story.
Basically, I have a really hard time feeling sorry for Rebecca Black. If I were her, I'd be enjoying my fifteen minutes of fame and be laughing all the way to the bank. As well as appearing on multiple TV shows, getting major radio play and her song being bought as a novelty on iTunes she's earning approximately $24,900 a week. Not bad for mom and dad's initial investment of $4000, wouldn't you say?
All I'm going to say is that if I was walking through school and my classmates 'kept singing my song at me in a really nasally voice', I'd pull out the three and a half grand I'd earned that day, blow my nose on a hundred, check my Rolex and walk on.
Even better, when the novelty wears off and people have moved onto the next viral star, with the whole bullying, hate-mail and death threat angle, I gunarantee she's a phonecall away from a book deal about her 'harrowing experience' (Hey if fucking Snooki can get a book deal, so can Rebecca Black).
But, anyway, the main thing I want to talk about is the song itself.
Is it the 'worst song ever'? Really?
Don't get me wrong, it's truly awful. The melody is annoying, the lyrics are bland and nonsensical... but slap that song on the radio between a Justin Bieber and a Britney Spears track and I wouldn't bat a frigging eyelid.
Basically, Rebecca Black is just another bland, cookie-cutter teen pop singer, but she made the mistake of releasing a single without a multi-million dollar marketing department behind her to explain to the public that she's not shit.
If Rebecca Black had been introduced to the world as Simon Cowell's protege, 'Friday' would have been a number one smash and we'd all be talking about how 'Friday' is a genius commentary on modern pop.
Basically, I think we can all see how ridiculous the whole situation has gotten when Justin Bieber starts taking the piss out of 'Friday's' lyrics:
Yeah, Bieber, because you're such a fucking artist.
'Tomorrow is Saturday and sunday comes afterwards' is a pretty fucking terrible lyric, but I'd hardly say that "Let's go...jump on my skateboard and eat some cake along the lake," is the lyrical masterpiece you think it is.
I think we all need some perspective here. On the one hand we have a poor little rich girl who got her mom and dad to stump up four grand so she can have a music video and it went viral... on the other hand, we have a seventeen year old kid selling millions of bland, manufactured cookie-cutter records, with massive success, who actually referred to himself as the 'Kurt Cobain' of his generation.
The problem isn't that Rebecca Black released a shitty record and got called on it...it's the fact there are so many 'Rebecca Blacks' out there that people take seriously.
In case you have no idea who Rebecca Black is, let me sum up the story for you:
14 year old girl has a single and music video produced by a 'vanity publisher'. Video ends up on Youtube. Video goes viral as 'the worst song ever'. Shit hits fan.
If you've never seen the video, here it is:
Now, first, let me address the controversy. Black has apparently been pulled out of school due to bullying and has recieved 'death threats'.
Rebecca Black has never recieved a death threat. What she has recieved is a bunch of youtube comments by idiot kids along the lines of "zomg ur video is so terable if i see u in the street ill run u ova wit my car"... and the traditional media, who apparently have no idea what the internet is like, have grabbed that with both hands because it makes the story more sensational.
As for the bullying? Well...probably, but it's not anything really out of the ordinary. I remember highschool. Highschool is all about trying to be as average as possible. If you're too intelligent, you're a nerd, not intelligent enough, you're thick...in other words, if you do anything that places you outside the norm, you're going to get bullied and made fun of.
I guarantee that there are twenty or thirty other kids in Rebecca Black's old school who are facing exactly the same level of bullying because their parents are poor, or because they suck at sports or because they're the first (or last) in their year to start developing breasts...but that doesn't exactly warrant a news story.
Basically, I have a really hard time feeling sorry for Rebecca Black. If I were her, I'd be enjoying my fifteen minutes of fame and be laughing all the way to the bank. As well as appearing on multiple TV shows, getting major radio play and her song being bought as a novelty on iTunes she's earning approximately $24,900 a week. Not bad for mom and dad's initial investment of $4000, wouldn't you say?
All I'm going to say is that if I was walking through school and my classmates 'kept singing my song at me in a really nasally voice', I'd pull out the three and a half grand I'd earned that day, blow my nose on a hundred, check my Rolex and walk on.
Even better, when the novelty wears off and people have moved onto the next viral star, with the whole bullying, hate-mail and death threat angle, I gunarantee she's a phonecall away from a book deal about her 'harrowing experience' (Hey if fucking Snooki can get a book deal, so can Rebecca Black).
But, anyway, the main thing I want to talk about is the song itself.
Is it the 'worst song ever'? Really?
Don't get me wrong, it's truly awful. The melody is annoying, the lyrics are bland and nonsensical... but slap that song on the radio between a Justin Bieber and a Britney Spears track and I wouldn't bat a frigging eyelid.
Basically, Rebecca Black is just another bland, cookie-cutter teen pop singer, but she made the mistake of releasing a single without a multi-million dollar marketing department behind her to explain to the public that she's not shit.
If Rebecca Black had been introduced to the world as Simon Cowell's protege, 'Friday' would have been a number one smash and we'd all be talking about how 'Friday' is a genius commentary on modern pop.
Basically, I think we can all see how ridiculous the whole situation has gotten when Justin Bieber starts taking the piss out of 'Friday's' lyrics:
Yeah, Bieber, because you're such a fucking artist.
'Tomorrow is Saturday and sunday comes afterwards' is a pretty fucking terrible lyric, but I'd hardly say that "Let's go...jump on my skateboard and eat some cake along the lake," is the lyrical masterpiece you think it is.
I think we all need some perspective here. On the one hand we have a poor little rich girl who got her mom and dad to stump up four grand so she can have a music video and it went viral... on the other hand, we have a seventeen year old kid selling millions of bland, manufactured cookie-cutter records, with massive success, who actually referred to himself as the 'Kurt Cobain' of his generation.
The problem isn't that Rebecca Black released a shitty record and got called on it...it's the fact there are so many 'Rebecca Blacks' out there that people take seriously.
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