Friday's Music Clip of the Week: "It's Friday"

With all of the hating going on over this Rebecca Black clip I could not resist jumping on the band wagon but give you more of the filler. Time to get the big picture on what has become a massive internet discussion, with everyone weighing in from Simon Cowell of American Idol / X Factor fame through to the new Queen of Pop Lady Gaga passing judgement.

Rebecca Black has been a solid trending topic on Twitter this week, every day there it is. She even knocked the Japanese Earthquake off the number one most talked aboput thing on twitter. Seriously. Everyday, the trending topics, there it is, still. A name to haunt those that are just so over this hyped up situation. I fall into that group. So over it.

But then you stumble across yet another brilliant cover and get sucked in all over again.
I wasn't going to do today's post about this song, rather the Foo Fighters after the amazing Christchurch Earthquake Appeal concert that they put on at short notice this week, but this Rebecca Black thing fits into the format of this blog a little more, after all the whole thing has been about marketing and market share, promotion and the price of publicity, and all out brand power.

The video has had 44million views on one youtube channel alone, with 74,000 likes and 631,000 dislikes. By the time you have entered REB in a quick google there she is, bringing up nearly 7.5 million entries for her name.
All of this in a short week in the life of a not so normal 13 year old American teenager.

Love her or hate her, you can be sure that this video is getting blogged about and played the world over today as after all it is Friday. And tomorrow is Saturday. And Sunday comes after-ward.

So who is Rebecca Black?

Well it seems that 13 year old Rebecca Black has been on this path for a while, attending music summer camps, and signing up with modelling and talent agencies at a y0ung age. Her parents allegedly paid Ark Music Factory $2000 to hook their daughter up, writing a song for her, and pumping out a video.

Her Ark Profile page can be found here: < http://arkmusicfactory.com/profile/rebeccablack > - copy and paste it people!
This is the bio from that page:

"Rebecca Black is a fun, loving, 13 year old. She loves to sing, dance and act, and she is always looking to try something new. Now in 8th grade, she landed the lead role in her school musical, Oklahoma!
She started dance classes when she was three years old and has continued studying dance since. She studied Jazz, Ballet, Hip Hop, and Tap. She starred in a local commercial when she was 7 for the building toy Puzzlecraft. She participated in a patriotic performing group. performing at over 50 locations including singing the Star Spangled Banner at the Angels Stadium. At age 11, she signed with a modeling management company. She started vocal lessons at 10 years old, and she's continued with it ever since. Singing is her passion, and it's what she loves to do. In the summers of 2008 and 2009 she participated in a musical theatre summer camp. When she started going to her local public school, she immediately auditioned for musical theatre, and now succeeds with flying colors. She starred in the school's rendition of Guys and Dolls, and their variety shows such as Showtime America, Broadway, USA, and Star Search. This past summer, she visited New York and participated in various workshops with cast members of West Side Story, Memphis, and In the Heights."

Right, that seals the deal then. She must be able to sing as she was in the school's glee club. Sweet. Sign that girl up and overlay massive amounts of autotune.....

So why all of the hatred directed at her? By hatred I mean just that. Some of it has been intense, and the journalists love bringing it up to her during interviews which makes it even worse.
It seems that she has encompassed the perfect storm of awfullness in the eyes of many, putting all of the absolutely worst things of our collective western culture into a 3.48 minute package.
A culture where a child with driven parents can purchase a 15 minute block of fame for their child, and expose both them and the rest of us to utter rubbish.

The song is the perfect blend of utterly horrid lyrics and song construction, an embarressingly horrid video with horrid dancing, over the top auto tune to hide what has to be originally horrid lyrics, horrid rapping in the bridge that is soooo out of place, just layers upon layers of horrid horribleness. Yuck. All of this from a 13 year old girl that is just trying so hard. Poor her. What is all of this doing to her self confidence? Amongst it all must be a 13 year old kid just becoming aware of herself that now has to deal with all of this media firefight with some critics being absolutely brutal, and some coming to her defence. Couple this with all of the chatshow appearances and the instant celebrity status and one imagines a little girl that has instantly got everything she dreamed off but at a huge price.

This leads nicely into the next video - from that girl in the pink dress - seriously, this is how she has created herself on youtube. She is the girl in the video, that wears the pink dress, otherwise known as "my friend is by my right aye....I got this, you got this , now you know it....?????" Her channel has had 360,000 views. O-kay...

Did you get it that her parent's driveway is 128 feet long. What? How is that relevant?
She seems to be riding the wave too, and has got a bunch of flash mob scenes up on youtube where she essentially does her "unique" dance in malls. All very scripted and staged. Joy.

And then we start getting into the hundreds of parody, tribute and copycat videos.

Enough already. If any of you looking at this have braved your way through all of those videos you deserve a million Big Picture Blog Credits and something for your bleeding ears.