Gotta Get Down on Friday

So . . . I have been fascinated all week with the latest internet sensation, Rebecca Black's "music" video Friday (fifteen million hits and counting - and that's double the count two days ago!).  I feel like I have so much to say about something that is so lacking in substance, I don't know where to begin.  The video plays like either a bad parody (because it's not over the top enough) or a really, really bad attempt at a good music video.  Being neither a rock music critic or that well versed in music videos (I don't watch many), I feel uniquely qualified to offer a full review of it.

But first, a bit of background.  While millions of people have seen the video (or very few people have watched it a whole bunch of times), the back story isn't as well known.  The video was produced by Ark Music, which is a company that caters to rich parents of talentless teens who want a real pop music experience.  Ark writes a song, the parents pay for the teen to get studio time to record it, and they film a professional-quality music video.  So the girls in the videos (almost all are girls) are proud to show it or post it on Youtube, because they think they're real rock stars.  This one happened to catch on.  Here it is in case you have been avoiding the internets this week and haven't seen it:

(if this link worked, I have successfully linked to my first video on this blog.  I'm proud, especially considering that I have often thought of converting to Neo-Luddism.)

So the video opens (after the a-Ha inspired bastardization of classic song lyrics that feature days of the week) with a stream-of-consciousness monotone, if stream-of-consciousness was done by someone without any actual thoughts.  Our heroine then goes down to the bus stop, where no bus comes (meaning?) but instead her friends arrive in a car that any teen would want to have.  What follows is the thematic existential question of the video - which seat to choose?  I suspect she is asking in a metaphorical sense, because there is no free seat in the front, and were she to choose it, the gear poking her ass would likely be uncomfortable. 

This leads into the chorus, which seems to me as though it was written by a former Soviet that had been in a coma since the mid-eighties and was pressed into service to write what he thought was a typical pop song.  How else can you explain lyrics like "fun, fun, fun, fun"?  Even the Beach Boys stopped at three funs.

The second verse is what I like to call "the part of the song that makes no damn sense whatsoever."  Here are the lyrics for your amusement and confusion:

         7:45, we’re drivin’ on the highway

         Cruisin’ so fast, I want time to fly

         Fun, fun, think about fun/You know what it is
         I got this, you got this/My friend is by my right
         I got this, you got this/Now you know it

Now I know what?  And why does she have to think so hard about fun?  How is that fun?  Anyway, after this I know for sure the "which seat can I take" question is just a metaphor, because she already sitting in (on) the back seat when she asks it.  Then another chorus (we have to get fun, partying, and ge'in' down in the chorus, dammit!  Make it work, Ivan!) followed by what has been the most controversial part of the song - the days of the week portion. 

In another Take On Me ripoff segment, she tells us that yesterday was Thursday, today is Friday (or she says it, Fry-a-day), tomorrow is Saturday, and Sunday comes afterwurrrrrrrrrds.  This isn't, as the Youtube comments suggest, because she thinks we don't know the days of the week; it's because given the utter vapidity of the song thus far, it's reasonable to think that we don't believe she knows them.  And just as she proves her first-grade intelligence level, she undermines it by failing to put a verb in her sentence.  Is "we so excited" supposed to sound hip and urban? 

Speaking of urban, it's time for the rap interlude by the Usher lookalike!  But really, if I were to start a company fleecing the parents of teenage girls who want to pretend they're Kesha, I would definitely have an Usher lookalike on the payroll.  He blathers something about a school bus and driving (and really, that isn't much worse than Left Eye's "I saw a rainbow yesterday . . ." bit from TLC's Wateralls) and then back to Rebecca Black for more choruses, more fun, and a merciful end to the pain.

Obviously the song is not intended to be a rock opus or even to have taken more than seven minutes to write (some of it screams of laziness - "we so excited" could have been "we're so excited," the constant accent on the wrong syllable problem, the terrible rhymes like bowl/cereal). And who knows - maybe Rebecca Black is happy with both the video and the attention; hey, no one has tried to take the video off Youtube.

But ultimately I feel hollow and sad at the end.  Not because this will follow Black around for the rest of her life (I can picture her being asked about it in job interviews) like Juliette Lewis's horrible cornrows from the 1992 Oscars follows her.  But rather because Rebecca Black will never enjoy a weekend in her life.  She puts way too much pressure on herself to have fun on the weekend (and to think about fun) that it's always going to be a letdown.  What happens if she doesn't get down on Friday, or if she's sick on the weekend?  It's better to just enjoy it as it happens rather than have such high expectations.

Anyway, happy Fry-a-day!