We are exactly the same.
What I mean is that we have the same mindset in trudging through the school week to get to Friday, to the weekend, and partying (or drinking or studying). Fun and partying (in any form) through the weekend with the ones we love.
Rebecca Black’s viral-hit single “Friday” is an abomination beyond words, taking the tenets of Justin Bieber-flavored pop to grotesque extremes with hilarious, tone-deaf results.
It reminds me of the 1976 Rick Dees joke song “Disco Duck,” which is said to have “killed disco.” (This wasn’t entirely the case, but let’s not let a good story get ruined here). The song makes the dance-pop genre out to be entirely stupid to a wide audience. And, as I’m sure you’re well aware, it is definitely proof of poor writing.
And yet this fascinates us as people so much. Seeing the dirt worst – i.e. spending a whole birthday listening to Jan Terri (Google it) – is always way more fascinating than listening to the best. But there’s something scarier in this than we know.
“Friday” preys on our insecurities as people in that we have to infer our ability to judge talent. Everyone who has listened to the song can only point out how terrible Black’s singing is or the sage wisdom of her ability to judge that Saturday comes after Friday. We see way more outside the song than a story, because obviously, nothing is there to grab on to, not even an interesting rhythmic pattern.
In the same seven-day span of “Friday” being originally posted, the Drive-By Truckers released their ninth studio record “Go-Go Boots.” Another complicated series of stories based in rural Southern life, “Go-Go Boots” is dense with depression, murder and the power of being helpless. In other words, it hits harder on the reality of living here, and the dangers of a small town where everyone knows everybody else.
The Truckers, originally bred from the Muscle Shoals area, are the exact opposite of Black. They take their time to write songs that double as literary poems, and it comes out as thematically depressing but well thought out. Even when they performed in Tuscaloosa back in 2010, their final song was a cover of the Jim Carroll Band’s “People Who Died.”
And for their worth, the album is destined to be a critical smash and get them a little money, enough to survive.
But they will never gain traction as a massive stadium-touring national band because deeper readings tend to point out the bleak. “Everybody Needs Love,” the most upbeat track of “Go-Go Boots,” shuns the concept of being lonely entirely as a person not having love. And since you don’t have love, you’re obviously unhappy. There’s half of your listener base gone in one song.
“Friday,” however, invokes emotion in the outside sense. Nothing in the song says anything important, but the listener can laugh or be driven mad. It’s the Fox News recipe of success: a base of people listen and love regardless of others, and another base of “well-informed” people listen to mock it. It’s the danger of snark. It is why this one terrible song culturally mocked as being terrible has made Black and her production company, The ARK Music Factory, up to a potential $1 million according to Forbes. That amount is based on iTunes sales alone.
Does it matter? Probably not. Maybe we just want to be in the back seat with our friends, laughing at Rebecca Black together.
