Remembering “Friday”

[Written sometime in the 2010s'...]

Last month marked the third anniversary of the release of a song called “Friday” by a singer named Rebecca Black. For a brief time, this track was the epitome of Talked About Bad Music. Make no mistake, the world is full of crappy music. But, like millions of other Internet users at the time, I had to give a listen to and take a look at the song to see what all the fuss was about.

Up until that time, I’ve never considered the concept of being offended by bad music. But everything about Rebecca Black's "Friday" offends me as a music-lover. At the risk of sounding like a music snob, which I am,* the song is God-awful, and the video is beyond stupid. I tried listening to the whole thing three times, but each time I had to shut it off 2/3rds of the way through. This is terrible, terrible, horrible entertainment. Even now, I won’t provide a link to it, because I don't want to contribute to the spread of it by doing so (you can find it easily on Google).

The song spread across what’s become the Pop Culture Circuit: the video itself, the viral spread of it on the wings of YouTube and fledgling social media, then coverage by C-list entertainment shows like TMZ, then to the bloodless and fleeting commentary of media outlets like the New York Times and National Public Radio. There was the backlash, then the backlash to the backlash. Millions gleefully voted with their virtual ballots (overwhelmingly to the negative) while dozens of musicians made remixes to try to take a ride on Ms. Black’s coat tails.

With a little more perspective, it’s easier to see how this song wasn't the product of art, but of pure Capitalism. It turns out the video was produced by a company called ARK Entertainment that was apparently going to specialize in making high-production-value, non-existent-music-value videos for kids whose parents have enough cash to waste on something like that. My feelings toward this kind of venture haven’t changed since 2011 - At that time, I felt anyone associated with this outfit should also be locked up, and the studio burned down, and salt scattered over the charred earth so nothing grows there ever again. I was careful to direct my wrath where it belongs, not toward Rebecca Black, who was, after all, just a teenager, but the adults in her life who enabled this pile of crap to exist. I wondered, does she have parents? If so, they should be locked up.

I was convinced that this was the next and final Great Leap Forward for the kind of participatory entertainment that was running and ruining American culture. I saw a future made up of an assembly line of untalented but monied youngsters cueing up for their shot at being able to say “at least they spelled my name right.” I remember thinking to myself, “Congratulations, Music Industry. You've won another round in completely lobotomizing what was once the greatest music-making country in the world.

But a funny thing happened over the next few years. The Internet has an interesting way of eating its young and destroying the very things it builds up, but sometimes its mass opinions can also be spot on. Other than a couple more video sensations like “Gangham Style,” there was no “next big thing” after “Friday,” at least in the form that project took. Thanks to that song and the reaction to it, Bad music that everyone knows is bad has become cliché. Any young adult Pop-star wannabes interested in making this kind of thing now have the good sense to at least limit their audience to friends and family, lest their performance challenges Ms. Black’s title of “Worst Song In History.”

Meanwhile, actual musicians with actual talent have gotten better at producing and marketing their material on the Internet, bypassing the remaining major labels and providing the world with a burgeoning independent network that’s making the best music out there, in my opinion. The chances that someone cruising the Web looking for the next piece of junk to snark at will find something genially worth liking and telling friends about has never been higher, and is only increasing.

American Pop Music is a form of entertainment that could always be vapid and irrelevant, but also used to be pretty good at taking the cultural temperature of a nation, giving voice to ideas and passions and occasionally even pronouncing revolutions. In an age of Corporate Pop where concepts like “art” and “message” aren't just ignored but actively sought out and destroyed in the name of Commerce, it’s not like that anymore, at least at the level of established distributors with national reach. Thanks to technology, the Rebecca Blacks of the world will always have a big microphone. But then again, so do the geniuses and risk-takers who are now making the best music the world has to offer, and they’re just a few clicks away. 

*The definition of “music snob” being “someone who believes there is such a thing as “good” music and “bad” music and there isn’t harm in occasionally having an opinion about which is which.