Top 10 Reasons Rebecca Black is F’in Awesome…
1. Proceeds of “Friday” are going to Japan quake/tsunami relief
As reported today on USA Today, via last night’s clip of The Tonight Show, Rebecca Black is donating proceeds of the song to the victims of the 2011 Sendai Earthquake and tsunami as well as her school. It’s not clear how much of the money is going to the former, and efforts to donate money to Japan are happening on a global scale. Being an extremely lucky 13-year-old girl whose hit went viral just a day after that disaster, her (and her family’s) lack of donating would have honestly been more surprising. Then again, it was her choice to donate or not. And she chose to donate.
2. Rebecca Black is dealing with the “Friday” backlash remarkably well
It’s hard to tell how anyone would feel if his or her YouTube garnered over half a million dislikes (compared to a mere 50,000 likes) in around 10 days’ time. The fact that a 13-year-old with a dream for being a pop star is able to handle it very well is very remarkable. A week ago, on Good Morning America, it was clear that Big Media didn’t know how to react to “Friday”, given that even the safe and hugable Good Morning America gave it a very backhanded compliment. Rebecca Black’s interviewer reading her the worst of the YouTube comments was painful to watch, despite Rebecca Black not looking shattered.
3. She can sing!… without auto-tune!
In the latter clip, Rebecca Black sings a bit of the Star Spangled Banner, and proves she’s no Small Wonder. She does claim she’s neither the best nor the worst singer, which is fair. She has enough singing talent to stand apart at her school. She still has a long way to go to have a specialized vocal talent worthy of mainstream success. But she doesn’t have nearly as awful a voice as her detractors claim. That said, “Friday” is a curse, as the one-note vocal in each verse is very ill-suited to show chops in anyone’s singing and lyrical ability. That’s purely an issue with The Ark Music Factory, her producers for the song.
4. “Friday” may actually accelerate the Death Of Auto-tune
Jay-Z talked the talked, but Rebecca Black may have unknowingly walked the walk. If “Friday” continues to plateau on its current momentum, other pop songs making heavy use of auto-tune — still a pop standard today after a long decade without any innovation in this effect’s use — may suffer from being juxtaposed with this new bar, and not a very flattering one if non-ironic success is the goal. As opposed to any auto-tune filled pop hits of the last decade, “Friday” is unique in that its primary blessing, curse, and crux is its earnest clumsiness. The song has two very distinct flavors delivered in a 1-2 punch. The first is the “WTF?!!! Is this real??” reaction, and the second is concentrated sugar. The former helps spread the latter. This segues to…
5. YouTube parodies and covers have gone viral… i.e. give up, “Friday” is catchy as hell
Many, many, MAANNNYY people have made parody videos of “Friday.” Even the most effortless behind these parodies are lying if they can claim they can get the song out of their heads. Imagine how exhausted are those who went to the trouble of doing the death metal parody. All of these have been made from scratch and uploaded in less than two weeks. The best of these response clips is the purest one of all: a 2+ minute clip of the chorus line “Fun Fun Fun Fun” in a loop.
6. “Friday” is basically an Andrew W.K. song
Granted, such a claim may not be considered “awesome” to some, but Andrew W.K. has been able to get away with far more praise following a formula very similar to “Friday”, retroactively. Take “Friday“‘s Moon Patrol shuffle, nearly double the tempo, set the synth presets to heavy metal guitars, and replace Rebecca Black with AWK. “Friday” would have been an obvious session for Andrew W.K.’s 2001 mainstream debut, I Get Wet.
7. “Friday” completely sideblinded the music community
No one — NO ONE — would have predicted how immense the reaction to “Friday” would be, positive or negative. As of today, it’s near the 40,000,000 hit mark on YouTube, and it’s only been 11 days since the video’s release. That’s over 3.6 million hits a day. That’s over 42 hits a second! How the hell does the music community react to such metrics? In fairness, the sales of the song are likely a tiny fraction of this, so the music industry is just having a laugh. “Friday” isn’t the first song made on the cheap to become an international hit. Ask Tone Lōc. But “Friday“‘s sudden scale of success must be another embarrassment to lack of testament of the music industry’s leading heads who are, after all, hired to make music as profitable to them as possible.
8. “Friday” is eclipsing “Bed Intruder Song”
“Friday” has roughly half the hits of “Bed Intruder Song” right now. But as stated above, “Friday” got to its point after 11 days. “Bed Intruder Song” has been out for a seemingly geological 5 months. Sure, “Friday” is very likely past its peak acceleration. Still, a viral YouTube is a viral YouTube. And one this successful rarely can allow its previous one to coexist. Given the array of ethical issues in “Bed Intruder Song” — a vocoder/auto-tune pop parody of a Huntsville, Alabama news story sampling a charismatic brother of a woman who was close to being raped* — the non-controversial non-exploitative “Friday” is welcome in so many ways. (*Note: the Dodson family is receiving half of the profits of “Bed Intruder Song.”)
9. Rebecca Black replaced Charlie Sheen as the trending topic on Twitter
This is self-explanatory, with the rare exception of ticket holders to see Charlie Sheen do “comedy.”
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P.S. - Yes, this is a snapshot Top 10 — meaning something that only has relevance in the extreme present! It’s entirely possibly Rebecca Black, and those influenced by her and “Friday”, could change course radically. This is what happens to everybody, especially after they’re 13 years old. However, there are no regrets in the now.
