So, what are your thoughts on Rebecca Black?

I for one, don’t like the song. I mean, it’s catchy, but it’s just terrible.

However, I don’t think she deserves any of the brutal comments she’s getting. I mean, the music is one thing, but the comments about her looks and how she should kill herself? Doesn’t that say more about our level of immaturity? After all, shitty music became popular in the early 2000’s, no one really said anything about it then.

She is an attractive girl.

Not much in the way of a voice though.

I have a daughter nearly that age, and I’d be proud of her if she made that video. I feel bad for all the crap she’s getting, but she’s also getting paid now too.

Sure, the song sucks, but I really can’t distinguish it as being a cut worse than most pop music I hear. Certainly doesn’t obviously suck more than this. Or the Holy Grail of suckitude.

  .

Want to hear them again?

She looks a lot older than thirteen! :-/ nice hair……..

Shit’s hilarious…....gotta catch my bus; I see my friiiieeends! It is sad and ridiculous, but it’s just the way it is.

You know, I had always wondered whether Thursday came before of after Friday. Now I know!

This is going to become the anther for kindergarteners everywhere!

It’s an idiotic song. Otherwise, I don’t care for her either way.

She sold 2 million copies at 99 cents each on iTunes in a week. It’s not my type of music, but it’s just pop, it’s catchy and simplistic and it’s not meant to be anything more than that. But good for her for doing something positive and succeeding.

@novemberrain

This question has been asked before, and it is entirely inappropriate to ask this question on any other day then friday, friday, friday. So you better live at least two time zones to the east of me, ‘cause where I live it’s Thursday! :D

Someone else made the comment that it’s sounds like she’s singing “Fried-eggs” not Friday. That’s all I can hear now. There is something awful and nasally about her voice that bothers me. Lyrically it’s typical shitpop and the video does make me want to kill myself. Oh and everyone click that last link it’s Peter O’Toole.

I do feel really sorry for her though.

The lyrics are hilarious and it has spawned some fantastic spoof vids. The only downside is it is in my head all the time. :(

I think the song is brilliant. I’ll use the following deconstruction of the lyrics to explain why. It’s very long, but totally worth the read. (I didn’t write it, by the way. I found it online).

Here goes:

Rebecca Black’s song “Friday is a work of unparalleled genius.

Of course you retards don’t see it you may never see it but I’m telling the truth. This is not a troll or whatever the kick you think it is. No. This song and its accompanying video represent one of the greatest works musical art I’ve ever seen. ranking right alongside anything Radiohead. Neutral Milk Hotel etc has ever done.

Why do I say this? Because underneath its bubbly. faux-happy surface is a seething cauldron of existential dread and despair. You’ve all missed the forest for the trees, and while you’ve been busy mocking it you’ve missed its brilliance. So let me take you through the video step by step and maybe at least a couple of you will begin to see.

Remember that these are just my own observations. after only a few viewings: this video is so multi-layered that unraveling its symbolism and meaning would take years of careful examination

We open with a production card and some building synths. As the music continues. we see a sort of calendar with flipping pages. Before we get to the lyrics. there’s a couple things in this sequence worth pointing out. because they set the tone for the rest of the video and establish its overarching motifs.
Firstly. Black appears here as a hideous moving drawing on the pages. moaning “yeah. yeah” in robotic. auto-tuned cadence. This startling image of the singer — and her voice—both lie snugly in the very nadir of the uncanny valley. Ostensibly we are looking at a human. but it isn’t close enough to what we recognize as human to inspire anything other than revulsion.

I think the director was trying to create a vision of the ’‘hyperreal” here. Like a sports drink with a flavor such as “blue mountain ice berry” that doesn’t exist in nature. Black is a simulacra of something that never existed in the first place. Like so many American teens. she is attempting to live up to an ideal that’s impossible to attain — outwardly succeeding in many respects. but never achieving self-actualization in any meaningful way. always feeling like an imposter. mired in a cycle of materialism and futile competition that serves no purpose She doesn’t feel “rear and so in these opening frames she is presented as just that: an unreal monster. a horrible. ugly outside creation.

The artificiality of the music itself plays into this theme as well — I don’t think there’s a single
II real instrument in the entire song

Secondly on the pages of the calendar we see some words that we are supposed to assume Black wrote there. On the page for Thursday, she has written “I am Thursday’s Child. :(” This is a very clever reference to a nursery rhyme that ascribes personality traits to people born on certain days of the week. The line for Thursday reads, ‘Thursdays child has far to go.”

There are multiple things going on here. As a young girl Black has far to go before reaching adulthood and the (largely mythical) freedoms she ascribes to it. She also has ‘far to go’ before she can accept herself for who she is.

She has ‘far to go` before she can be the person everyone around her expects her to be—very. very far—and she will never get there. These are the main conflicts that are present throughout the song.

Finally, the lyrics start. The monstrous drawing of Black gives way to the flesh-and-blood Black, just waking up with her alarm clock. Her eyes snap open and she starts out of bed instantly, almost mechanically.

>7 AM waking up in the morning >Gotta be fresh gotta go downstairs ‘Gotta have my bowl
>Gotta ha. e cereal
Gotta She has no choice. She HAS to do these things As Black sings these lines, she gives a disdainful look to her alarm, obviously wishing she could sleep some more. but dutifully she throws her covers off (does this represent her urge to throw off the comforting but ultimately cloying shackles of childhood? Perhaps.) and we cut to her standing downstairs, dressed and ready to go, where she finishes the verse.
In the downstairs section she stands stone-still. her facial features unmco,ing as she tells us that she must have a bowl of cereal. This is her routine- to break it would be a horrible transgression. And what exactly happens if she breaks her routine? Well. nothing—but she doesn’t know that and she’s too terrified to find out. She wants freedom but she isn’t strong enough to give it to herself

>Seeing everything
>The time is going. ticking on and on And everybody’s rushing
Behind Black, her family goes through their own daily routine in fast-forward. No one has time anymore_ it seems to her, and by extension to the viewer. Everyone’s day is firmly regimented planned out months in advance and there isn’t any room to allow oneself a peaceful moment. For success we have traded in our very identities Black is disgusted with her family and more importantly with herself

>Gotta get down to the bus stop >Gotta catch my bus
More gottas. Again. Black has no choice in what she does with her time We cut to her at the bus stop where suddenly she notices something off-screen and gives a painfully faked smile: ei sea my inenda
Her smile isn’t real. As the camera reveals her ‘friends’ pulling up in a late-model car neither are theirs She cannot stand these people. Like her they’re imposters, trying to live up to some abstract version of what a perfect teenager should be. and she hates them for it. But on the other hand they are nothing less than a mirror into her own empty soul — all the more reason to despise them

>Kicking in the front seat >Sitting in the back seat >Gotta make my mind up >Which seat can I take’
A verse absolutely pregnant with meaning. It’s gotten a lot of derision. and that’s a shame because it’s one of the great little moments in this song.

Black surmises the car. Her friends are motioning for her to join them. Why would she do that instead of taking the bus? It’s obvious that her friends aren’t going to school today. And as she looks at them she realizes that she has to make up her mind: will she continue the daily routine that has become her own personal prison, or will she break free. skip school and taste independence?

Which seat can she take? Will she sit in the back, a passive bystander to her own life? Or will she sit in the front — wrest control of her own destiny and decide for herself what she wants to do?

>It’s Friday. Friday
>Gotta get down on Friday
We cut to Black in the car with her friends. But she’s in the back After all that turmoil, she’s still a slave to others, doing not what she wants, but what is suggested to her by her peers. She may have rebelled against the tyranny of schooling but she’s still imprisoned and acting without will
“Gotta get down on Friday? Not ‘wanna get down on Friday: or “gonna get down on Friday: or any of a number of lines that may have worked Its another -gotta? She is as much under the control of society as ever. In fact, her minor rebellion may itself be part of the act she’s been putting on her whole life. What teenager doesn’t skip school?

>Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend
>Partying. partying. yeah! >Partying. partying. yeah! >Fun, fun. hin
>Looking forward to the weekend
Horrible. No one in the car is happy. They bob their heads and smile through gritted teeth as they lie about how much fun they’re having, but they all look so desperate, so pained. They look OLD. like world-weary soldiers. Their refrains of ‘yeahr are delivered with unenthusiastic fist pumps. the veil on their false joy wearing alarmingly thin.

Black chants ‘fun, kin. fun’ not like someone who is enjoying themselves but like a Nazi in a concentration camp. She is ordering herself to have fun, as if simply saying the words will make it so. But its not so. and she knows it This isn’t fun. This is hell.

>7.45. we’re driving on the highway >Crusing so fast,
>I want time to fly
12 hours have passed in an instant. We cut to Black in a completely different car. wearing a completely different outfit with a completely different group of people What happened in the interim? That’s left to the viewer’s imagination but there is some imagery here that strongly implies Black lost her virginity at some point in the time gap.

Firstly, all the people in her company are noticeably older than the original group of friends She is with adults now, not children This suggests that she too is an adult she has stepped into womanhood.
Secondly in the morning she was wearing a bright purple shirt. symbolic of youth and innocence. Now she wears all black, symbolic of impurity—and mourning. She has lost her innocence- and she regrets it The car, too. has gone from white to black — pure to impure.

Whatever the case. it’s clear Black has had quite the day. But still she sits in the back seat — through it all. she is still not in control.

Why does she vvant time to fly? Isn’t she having ‘fun. in fun’? Of course not This has been the worst day of her short life and she wants it to be over as soon as possible. This is probably the only time she directly betrays her true emotions in the entire song. Her self-loathing over giving up her virginity — and over myriad other things — bubbles to the surface in that fleeting instant before she tamps it all back down again and continues the pathetic charade of enjoying herself

,Fun fun >Think about fun

Again. ordering herself to have fun. This is reminiscent of lie back and think about England,’ the advice given to Victorian-era brides on how to deal with being raped by their husbands. Was her loss of virginity willing? Or did she ‘grin and bear it’ as part of the ritual she felt she had to endure to cross the rubicon into adulthood?
Now that she has crossed that rubicon. and nothing has changed. she is deeply ashamed Yet still she lies to herself, still she pretends to be having fun.

,You know what it IS’
>I gat this. you got this >My friend is by my right >I gat this. you got this >Now you know it

She smiles, but her eyes tell a different story. They’re pleading with you to understand her, her plight. She wants you to understand why she’s done this. and to forgive her. But she really wants something else. She wants to forgive herself of what has happened today.
Maybe she never will.

>Kicking in the front seat >Sitting in the back seat ‘Gotta make my mind up ‘Which seat can I take?
We come full circle. She knows that to become a truly free agent she will have to disavow her false friends and live for herself Will she be able to take this step? Will she summon the courage to strike out on her own? Immediately she answers for herself: she hugs her two ‘friends’ closer. She isn’t ready to be her own person yet Not even the loss of her innocence could imbue her with the courage to move forward. She will be a slave to others for the foreseeable future.

>It’s Friday, Friday
‘Gotta get down on Friday
‘Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend, weekend
Black arrives at a party and waves to a boy about her age. He glances salaciously at her backside — perhaps this is the boy who took her virginity? The party is outdoors and it’s pitch black except for the headlights from the cars there. Without her friends. without her peers Black would be in dark_ completely lost. The meaning is obvious.
Again, she’s -gotta ° get down. The line has now acquired a disturbing sexual connotation given what has transpired, but its basic meaning is essentially the same.

-Friday Frets.
>Getting down an Friday
Watch closely here, this is around 1:50. Her smile completely drops for an instant as she says the second line. She hates herself

>Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend
The boy from before walks up behind Black and makes an inappropriate sexually-charged grab at her. She swirls around in shock. but then fakes a smile at him. She cannot bring herself to admit how disgusting she finds him.

>Partying. partying yeah’ >Partying. partying. yeah! >Fun, fun. fun
>Loolong forward to the weekend
Black walks backwards here. It’s easy to read into that. She’s not improving herself, but regressing. For all her bluster and pretending. she’s worse off tonight than she was this morning. More of her false friends make unconvincing fist pumps. Once again, no one is happy.

‘Yesterday was Thursday. Thursday ‘Today it is Friday, Friday
We see Black again as the drawing-monster from the beginning. She recites the progression of the days of the week.

Yesterday was Thursday, today is Friday. This transformation and these lyrics validate the suggestion that her rebellions today have been nothing more than yet another piece in the larger act she’s been putting on. of being the perfect teenager. The days of the week are set in stone. they always come in the same order. And Black’s rebelliousness was equally predictable. It wasn’t spontaneous at all.

>We, we, we so excited
‘We so excited
‘We gonna have a ball today
Black talks in broken English, but it’s just an affectation, like everything she’s done today. Talking like a stereotypical ‘urban” (read: black) person is supposed to be °edgy ” for this young white suburban girl, but it’s not edgy if everyone in her peer group is doing it. just fired and cliched She’s no bohemian or free-thinker or even common punk. she’s a mindless drone doing what all the others do.

>Tomorrow is Saturday
And Sunday comes afterwards
The predictability of her actions are again hammered home as Black is shown directly turning from the moving drawing into her real life counterpart. The drawing-monster and Black are the same entity: a horrendous, unreal abomination, revolting yet pitiable.
.dorit want this weekend to end
But she does. She trembles with this lie and has to say it with an open-mouthed gape, as if forcing it out of herself.

How long can she go on like this before she cracks?

>RB Rebecca Black
>So chillin’ in the front side
A grown man begins to rap. cutting into Rebecca’s lyrics (symbolizing her powerlessness?) He calls her by name, then looks down at his crotch as he says the second line. More sexual connotations abound. Has this adult man victimized the young Black?

>In the backseat ›I’m drrving cruising
These lines have caused confusion. but it makes sense if you consider ‘So chillin’ in the front side, in the backseat’ to refer to Black. and -I’m driving, cruising’ as referring to himself. He’s having sex with her (Black is ‘so chillin’ in the front sides ie being penetrated). but largely against her will (she is still in the back seat) Rather.

HE is the one in control — HE is in the front seat. driving ‘Cruising” here takes on its sexual meaning as well as its more literal one—he is cruising for underaged girls to abuse

>Fast lanes. sratching lanes >With a car on my side
>Passing by is a school bus >In front of me
>Makes me tick tack. tick lock >VVanna scream
Chilling. This man is a pedophile and the children aboard the school bus arouse him. But let’s look closer. The fact that they’re on a school bus is very meaningful indeed. Because if Black had followed her usual routine and gone to school, had failed to rebel — she may still have not escaped the fate that befell her tonight. Eventually she would have been sullied by the horrors of the adult world. For her, there is no escape, and there can never be

‘Check my time. it’s Friday
>It’s a weekend
‘We gonna have fun ‘Come on. come on
The man looks in the rearview mirror but the position of the camera makes it appear as if he’s looking directly at the viewer. And he says we gonna have fun: not “I’m gonna have fun.’ This is an accusation, a recrimination. We are all complicit in the crimes this man commits. By forcing the image of perfection upon young girls. by sexualizing them, by turning a blind eye to their cries for help. WE are responsible for the -fun’ this man has. We are no better than him.

>It’s Friday. Friday
>Gotta get down on Friday
>Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend weekend >Friday. Friday
>Getting down an Friday
>Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend

We cut back to Black performing in front of a large crowd. This is really what she’s been doing her entire life. of course: performing. None of them seem that interested even as she sways and smiles and shouts about how great everything is What’s more. we continually see cuts to Black standing alone in a bizarre darkened room full of strange glowing smoke. where she moans in protest — at one point (around 2:55) yelling out “n00000” as the Black performing in front of an audience announces that everyone is looking forward to the weekend.

This is Black’s inner dialogue_ and likely it’s been going on for the entirety of the day — this is just our glimpse at it. Outwardly_ she’s happy and ebullient but in her mind she’s shouting out in horrible pain trapped in a fevered hellscape of her own creation

>Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend >Partying. partying. yeah!
>Partying. partying. yeah!
>Fun. fun. km
>Looking forward to the weekend
>It’s Friday. Friday
>Gotta get down an Friday
>Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend. weekend >Friday, Friday
>Getting down on Friday
‘Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend
As the song draws to a close, we cut back and forth like this — the projection Black gives of herself and the torment within. Finally her inner self isn’t even attempting to speak intelligibly. instead just yelling as loud as she can.

eyes wrenched closed. fists balled up. But in the real world she forges on singing and dancing for the crowd_ and the pedophile from before looks on approvingly his prey’s spirit fully broken.

And when she stops singing, she looks down at everyone before her embarrassed, disgusted_ kill of nothing but despair.

Now that her performance is done. the crowd will disperse and forget about her and for everything she’s endured she will have gained nothing. She has literally become the -poor player that struts and frets her hour upon the stage.’

She has realized that her life is a futile mockery of real happiness a hollow. meaningless simulation.
As Black’s day draws to a close, she has stared into the abyss—and the abyss has stared back.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard

Whoever wrote that has WAY TOO MUCH TIME on their hands ;P

@DominicX, I concur. And I sort of wish it was me.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard That article is brilliant, I giggled plenty. “She smiles, but her eyes tell a different story. They’re pleading with you to understand her, her plight[.]” Give us a link to this article! Who wrote it?

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Wow…......I’m not even going to finish the rest because I feel it’s a waste of my time. It was comical, though.

And they say size doesn’t matter.. ;D

@everephebe, I found it in the comments section here.

@Blackberry that’s what I thought at first, but then I went ahead and read it anyway. Some of my philosophy major friends are in a philosophy of music class and they actually spent an hour discussing the existential crisis evident in the song.

As Charlie sheen says… “Rebecca Black, we don’t hate you because you’re famous. You’re famous because we hate you,”

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard .. just Wow dude ! your after that 7000 character award aint you?

@SeaTurtle, the Colossal Squid award, you mean? That one only requires 2500 characters and I’ve won it 9 times ;-)

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard . Winning

I think the song is annoying and the video sucks. But I think the people who are saying things to her on Twitter like “Kill yourself” are vile, and I admire the fact that she’s responded to that with maturity.

The song is bad. She might have a voice, I can’t tell under all that AutoTune. But she’s attractive and confident and if you mute it, I enjoy watching the video. And I feel really horrible for her – people say mean things. I actually hope that she’ll take the money, retreat back to normal life where she can use the money to get a good education, and come back in a few years when she’s more emotionally equipped to handle the criticism that will come with any publicity or fame.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I kept laughing while I read that. It’s a miracle that I didn’t wake up everyone in the house. “She has stared into the abyss- and the abyss has stared back.”

It’s too bad that people are having trouble separating the girl from the song. Rebecca Black seems like a well-adjusted teenager. The song is proof that there is no god. The person who dreamed up and/or greenlit that song has to be the most cynical bastard ever.

Second only to U2 in lyrical subtlety underlining the bleak existence of the working man. Or… nuclear war. Something like that.

@Haleth, I lol’d at that part too. The cynical bastard you refer to is actually Patrice Wilson. Spoiler alert: he’s also the rapper in the song, as well as the producer.

She’s really cute, but I feel horrible that she is having to endure a bunch of really horrible remarks from people like that she should cut herself or become an anorexic. It’s just bullying, the same kind of crap that happens in schools and on Facebook every single day. The kind of shit that makes very vulnerable young people commit suicide. It sounds like this young lady is handling this awful situation pretty well. Can’t say that I’d be able to deal with it so well if it was me.

The song is horrible and I did hear that they “autotuned it” but that doesn’t mean that they made her voice better, it just means that they changed her voice. She was on some talk show the other night and they asked her to sing a few lines from the Star Spangled Banner, a very difficult song for most people (just ask Christina Auguilera, who is a professional singer). She sounded pretty good. Much better than most 13 year old girls.

I think the whole thing is just an unfortunate situation, but it’s good that so far, she’s been handling all of the horrific negative publicity pretty well for someone who’s so young. That kind of bullying crap would crush most people, young and old alike.

I hope that some other record company gives her a chance to sing a non-auto tuned song to see how it works out. She’s very pretty and seems like a nice young lady.

It’s one thing to say mean things to and about Charlie Sheen, an adult who has made a lot of really stupid decisions in his life, but this is just a young girl, she was trying to follow her dream, it didn’t go so well and people are dragging her through the mud like she’s some kind of baby killing criminal.

Stop spreading the virus!

I couldn’t even watch the whole thing, but like @Joker94 and @Kardamom, I’m not going to excoriate someone just because they made a lame but otherwise harmless video.

Hell, my wife can’t sing, but she did karaoke once, and I was proud of her for giving it a try and having a good time doing it.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard, the song and the commentary ought to be a single piece of art. On the other hand, Zappa’s insights are equally revealing:

She’s nasty, she’s nasty
She digs it in bed
That’s right

Do it again, ha
And do it some more
Hey, that does it, by golly
And she’s nasty for sure
Nasty nasty nasty
Nasty nasty nasty
Only thirteen, and she knows how to nasty

She’s a dirty young mind, corrupted
Corroded
Well she’s thirteen today
And I hear she gets loaded

@ratboy

I think Zappa wrote that in honor of Moon becoming a teenybopper.

That this is considered music, makes me sick to my stomach.

I thought her song was just another weekend warrior pop anthem.
Brb, I shall return.

She’s 13… whatever. I think Kim Kardashian’s song is much worse.

To parallel The Bastard’s wall of text, I found this link today. It begins by likening her to Vicki from Small Wonder, and also has great quotes like this:

Perhaps this explains the outsized revulsion/fascination engendered by “Friday,” which we may now understand as a double-backed retelling of Lolita and Othello: The man before us is clearly speeding towards a illicit sexual assignation with our underage heroine.

Also:

A phallic tree trunk behind her marks the completion of the anarcho-sexual odyssey, cock as axis mundi, Moses as Lolita. Then, to further highlight the doneness of the deed, she’s suddenly in a red-lit room, a private space, sustaining a single note at once suggestive of childish tantrums, orgasmic ecstasy and Taliban ululation.

It’s infamy; autotune can only go so far I guess…I do not want to say any more, because this only adds to her publicity.

I showed the video to my 7 year old daughter the other day and she liked it. My daughter can also sing along to The Beatles and Queen, so it’s not that my daughter has bad taste. Far from it.

I don’t think many, if any, 7 year olds are going to tell this girl to slit her wrist, just sayin’. Don’f forget who the target audience is for music like this. Give the poor girl a break. I’d rather my daughter sing along to songs about Fridays than songs about slappin’ a bitch or gin and juice.

@jonsblond I’d rather my daughter sing along to songs about Fridays than songs about slappin’ a bitch or gin and juice. Hellz yeah!

@MyNewtBoobs I should practice what I preach. I sang along to Eazy-E in my teens. ;)

@jonsblond Hey, maybe it’s just me being overly cynical, but I’ll take pretty much any moment of parents being slightly better than “Hey, pole dancing is great exercise – that’s why I do the classes with my preschool and grade-school daughters!”

All this attention she’s getting is just because people are making fun of the video… it’s the latest meme and everybody has to make a big deal about it, just as we all are doing right now. I don’t believe anyone takes this song seriously, but I know a few people who have bought this song on iTunes just as a joke.

She doesn’t sound good, but people (errrr… teens) should stop the HATE. Blame her producers for producing a music that is not pleasing to the ears of many teen agers.

Interesting. Welllll at first i was like, this is ridiculous but then i realised who am i to judge? I’m not a fan of the song but all the hating on Rebecca is rather sad. I would say some people need to grow up but sadly, that wont ever happen. Anywaaay if you hate this song so much it’s simple, just don’t listen to it.

Rebecca’s video is just a copy of Dancing Crazy by Miranda Cosgrove, of iCarly.

I think the song is sad. Its stupid and the lyrics are a story that sound like a 2 year old wrote it.

this epitomizes my sentiments about it

@ninjacolin the song is rendered almost pleasant in comparison, that version makes me want to kill myself so much less!

Somehow Hollaback Girl got into my music collection. I would argue that is certainly not a clearly better song than Friday.

fun fun fun fun