3/22/11 - Watch for Rebecca on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Tuesday March 22nd, 2011 @11:35pm 10:35pm central
When we want to pick on someone in the media, young YouTube-powered pop stars may be the lowest-hanging fruit. Witness the collective condemnation of Rebecca Black, the 13-year-old California girl who partnered with a vanity record label to make what many consider the Battlefield Earth of pop songs and the worst music video of all time: "Friday."
It's surprising that venerable bastions of news like TIME and Slate even bothered to give the song and video a thumbs down, but that only contributed to the legend. Tosh.O got into the act, and there are currently way more Friday parodies than days of the week. Right now it's hipper to slam "Friday" than it is to love Justin Bieber.
But are the "Friday" lyrics any cheesier than some of those in beloved songs by bona fide stars Willow Smith and Ke$ha? Let's compare.
In Friday, Black sings: "It's Friday, Friday/Gotta get down on Friday/Everybody’s lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend/Friday, Friday/Gettin' down on Friday/Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend."
The lyrics to 10-year-old Willow Smith's "21st Century Girl" aren't exactly poetry by comparison: "I'm the type of chick/That likes to rock the beat/I like to rock the beat/I like to rock, to rock the beat/21st Century Girl/I do what I like/21st Century Girl/I'm taking you for a ride/21st Century Girl/Yeah, I'm gonna live it up."
But at least Smith is only 10. Ke$ha is 24 and rocking lyrics like these in the appropriately named "Blah Blah Blah": "Oh Blah-di-blah blah, blah-di blah blah blah/Comin' out your mouth with your blah blah blah/Zip your lips like a padlock/And meet me in the back with a jack at the jukebox/I don't really care where you live at/Just turn around, boy, let me hit that."
We don't have to love "Friday" (it's not like Black is up for a Grammy or anything), but why tear it down so harshly? After all Ke$ha and Willow have legitimate producers; all Rebecca had was a dream and $2000 to make her music video.
Black says she feels like she's being cyberbullied -- and indeed she is. What else would you call experiencing a barrage of ridicule across the Internet? What did Rebecca do to deserve all this negative attention while others do virtually the same thing -- at times way more inappropriately -- and receive nothing but adoration?
I think Rebecca's earned a three-day weekend and then some... especially now that she's scored a real manager.
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