We do not live in an age with a shortage of bad songs. But are most of those bad songs pop songs? Short answer, yes.
I often forget that the only real barrier between the general populace and the recording studio is money. When cash isn’t an issue, any idiot can sing to their heart’s content and put it on a CD for however-many-dollars an hour, with all the accommodations high-grade sound equipment can provide (by “accommodations,” I mean auto-tune).
Oh, he’s calling Rebecca Black an idiot, real original! She’s the pride of Orange County! She’s just having fun! You’re just jealous!
Relax, imaginary heckler. Get this: I don’t think Rebecca Black is an idiot. There, I said it. I think she’ll have a few regrets in five or so years, but she probably won’t notice them from the balcony of her MANSION. This girl is getting PAID.
Unless you’re her parents, you probably never heard of Rebecca Black until a few weeks ago. For those of you don’t already know, YouTube’s latest sensation is a lo-fi music video for thirteen-year-old Rebecca Black’s debut single, “Friday.” It’s a pop song set to synthesizers with auto-tuned vocals, really dumb lyrics and an equally dumb rap verse. You’re thinking, so what? Nothing we can’t hear on Hot 97, right? Right, but the difference is in the details. “Friday” isn’t just a bad song with a bad music video; it might be one of the worst songs, set to one of the worst music videos.
Oh, he’s picking on my girl Becca B. again. What, you think you can do better, buddy? How many hit singles have you recorded?
Listen imaginary heckler, I’m not going to waste time insulting her singing voice or lyrical capability.
We don’t even know if she’s a bad singer because she was auto-tuned the whole song, remember? And for Christ’s sake, she’s not the worst songwriter of all time. She didn’t even write the song. The song was written by Clarence Jay and Patrice Wilson (the latter happens to be the creepy, overage rapper who shows up in the video). They are the ones responsible for “Fun, fun, think about fun / you know what it is” and “Tomorrow is Saturday / And Sunday comes afterwards.”
I watched “Friday” due to a friend’s recommendation, and after I stopped laughing I immediately wanted to know more. Who is this? More importantly, who made this happen? A Google search of Black turned up her (recently made and currently up for deletion) Wikipedia page. That’s how I found out about Ark Music Factory, a small music label that operates out of Los Angeles and specializes in finding aspiring young artists and getting them into the studio. They write songs for the kids and then shoot music videos for them.
If this sounds shady, it’s because it is. After watching a few related videos, I realized I had discovered an entire sub-subculture of young women producing their own (terrible) music videos in a shameless attempt to become YouTube stars.
It got better when I tried to look up a couple of Ark Music Factory’s other videos. Literally as my browser was sitting on the page to “Friday,” Ark shut down their YouTube account! That’s right – all of their videos have been taken down.
This is a tragedy. Ark said they would get rid of the videos at the behest of the parents. The Internet might be a cesspool of ignorance and hatred, but it’s a communal cesspool of ignorance and hatred, and when people try to erase the past like this… it hardly matters. YouTube’s attention span is notoriously low. She was already on her way out, but various threats and insults from trolls on YouTube certainly sped the process along. Is the point of all this that cyber bullying is wrong?
Of course not, the point is that there is a vanity music label in L.A. that can make children famous. Lady Gaga called Black a genius, referring of course to the fact that she got so famous so quickly, and Simon Cowell finds the whole thing endearingly hilarious. Ark is probably as surprised as anybody else that Rebecca Black is a star, seeing as they already had an impressive collection of bad music videos. For some reason “Friday” was the one that garnered over sixty million views. Now, we can’t even watch it unless we buy it on iTunes or something.
Come on, Rebecca! I thought the haters weren’t going to get you down! Seriously, she said that. I think it was on Leno or something. THAT’S RIGHT. She was on Leno. Does it irk me that this random adolescent has made more money in less than a month than I will probably ever make? To be honest, it is kind of annoying.
Oh really? Guess what, Rebecca donated a bunch of her earnings to victims of Japan’s earthquake. She’s all a philanthropist and what not. AND, she’s a member of a patriotic singing group called Celebration USA. What do you say to that, jerk?
Oh crap, she’s a good person? That’s even more annoying.
In any case, I wouldn’t expect too much more from Rebecca Black, and if she does stick around, it’s good to know someone out there made it big, right?… Yeah, I’m not happy about it either.
