A song by a 13-year-old American teenager has gone viral on the internet after being widely described as the worst one ever recorded.
Rebecca Black’s pop song called Friday has been viewed on YouTube more than 29 million times.
It has trended on Twitter and been the subject of huge online comment and discussion.
That’s mainly because it’s been derided by millions of people for what they say are its awful lyrics.
Ones like “yesterday was Thursday Thursday, today it is Friday Friday”, “gotta get down to the bus stop, gotta get my bus, i see my friends” and “we we we so excited, we so excited”.
I would accept being horribly rich and famous as a consequence of writing a bad song.
Then I promise I would only spend time working on “quality” music. If I think it’s high quality, it must be, right?
In all seriousness, I think the guys making money off it are the dudes who got her parents to cough up mega-bucks for this opportunity: http://arkmusicfactory.com . At least they can’t be accused of false advertising - it seems like it’s nothing more than a “puppy mill” for kids of rich parents!!
My understanding is that this song was the creation of a “song mill”… where you pay them to write a ditty for you and they shoot a cheap video to go with it.
Actually, it’s nothing new – once upon a time there were a number of such studios… typically they would set your lyrics or poetry to music. This was well before the DAW era, so they had session players to record the track. Of course, most of it was quite lame and derivative, but occasionally a gem would result.
A few year back I read an article and visited a website that had samples of this bygone industry. Most of it was schlock, unsurprisingly.
I’ve tried to find some info about it… nothing I “google” brings up what I’m looking for. There was a word that described this particular industry, but I’ll be danged if I can remember it.
But the story I had read was about the 60’s and 70’s, where they had staff musicians to record the arrangements.
EDIT: I found it! It’s known as the Song-Poem Industry and apparently it was pretty active going back even into the 1950’s. There was a film documentary about it and it was the film – not an article – that I saw (and then subsequently read more on the Internet).
Like I said, most I heard was pretty schlocky, but a few of them were good.
Verse:
What is that haunt -ing re -frain that you hear in the air?
Here and there, ev -'ry where,
It’s just a beau -ti -ful strain that keeps taunt -ing my brain con -stant -ly,
It’s my mel -o -dy it’s my sy -pho -ny.
Chorus:
Ink -A Dink -Doo, A dink -a dee, A dink -a doo.
Oh, what a tune for croon -ing
Ink -A Dink -Doo, A dink a dee, A dink -a doo,
It’s got the whole world spoon -ing.
Es -ki -mo bells up in Ice -land, Are ring -ing,
They’ve made their own Par -a -dise Land, Sing -ing
Ink -A Dink -Doo, A dink -a dee, A dink -a doo,
Simp -ly means Ink -A dink -A dee A dink -a doo.
I was going to post some of the brilliant youtube parodies of “friday” but they’re just too numerous – go over there and check some of them out, especially the Heavy Metal version
She’s up to 35 million views – roughly 35 million MORE views than I’ll ever have!
(Wait – is that an “Appeal to Popularity” Paul W? )
An appeal to popularity is a logic fallacy claiming the quality of something is a measured by it’s popularity. Brains’ claim in te other thread that those with a high post count are likely to be more knowledgable is a form of that.
I don’t think anyone has claimed ‘Friday’ is quality - Although I love the lyrics. Better than a lot of the airy fairy pretentious rubbish I read in so called “poems”.
This is actually an interesting topic. This deserves more attention. I think that sincerity in lyrics and stupidity are very close, and there is also such a thing as Viral Music and her work. (I’m not an expert, and I don’t know how this kind of music is made) But I think that viral music is somehow firmly entrenched in my mind, and it acts according to certain rules.
Somehow it occurs to me that as an example of Mac DeMarco tracks, they are funny, but they have a lot of sincerity, and they have become more than viral, right?
