Saturday, March 19, 2011

Putting Yourself Out There

A couple of weeks ago, this cute young lady by the name of Rebecca Black had her little video suddenly take off.

Why is that?  There's a couple of reasons.

1) The song is dreadful.  I mean, in the wide world of bubblegum pop that is almost devoid of meaning beyond the three and a half minutes of the song, this one is pretty vapid.  It has potential but it falls flat in a bunch of places.  It could have been better.  At least it has a nice beat and a catchy tagline.

2) Tosh.0 picked it up and roasted it through and through.  Tosh's site is hugely popular; if you want to get a lot of notice, even bad press from Tosh.0 guarantees a quick bump on your hit count.  "Friday" was holding at a few thousand views on Youtube, but since Tosh.0 gave it some airtime, Ms. Black's passed 20 million views and is gaining altitude.

It's not a great song.  Tosh.0's title for their segment on the song is "Songwriting Isn't for Everybody," and man are they ever right.  But to Ms. Black's credit, she didn't write the song.  She wanted to do a song, her parents were amenable to the idea and footed the bill.  It wasn't cheap, but it wasn't like one of those awful $50,000 birthday bashes we used to hear about, either.  Besides, with the kind of press she's getting, there's a better than even chance that money is going to come back.

So let's get to the part where it turns out Rebecca Black is worth watching.  First, she got off her butt and made the video.  Second, when offered two different songs to do, she evaluated them and rejected the one covering, as she puts it, "adult love."  She says she hasn't experienced that yet, so it didn't feel right to sing about it.

That's wisdom and discretion.  Like Justin Bieber singing about holding hands with his girlfriend, Ms. Black has chosen a little modesty.  In a day when so many kids are in an all-fired hurry to do the grownup things, it's a refreshing change.  Don't forget, this kid is thirteen.  She just cracked into the teen years, and she's making smart choices.

It doesn't hurt that she's attractive on video.  She's got a big smile, and cheekbones that vain people will probably pay money to have duplicated onto their own faces.

So what did she sing?  Well, if you're like approximately 1/350th of the entire human population, you already know she sang about Friday, Friday.  Gotta get down on Friday.  She's a kid, the last day of the week has its own special ambience that the weekend does not.  I mean, shoot - the weekend is your free time and when you get there it's great but Friday is the line before the roller coaster.  It's anticipation, plans, a happy daze of possibilities.  There's an awful lot of stuff out there that really, the buildup is as good as, or even better than the real thing. You could apply that to the "adult love" category, too.

I've listened to the song a couple of times now, and frankly that's plenty.  Ms. Black has a good voice, and I think we're far, far from done hearing from her.  I think she's got a future in the music business.  But if I never hear "Friday" again, well, that's okay by me.

Sing us something else, kiddo.  I want hear what you've got.  I bet it's going to be great.

No comments:

Post a Comment