You may have heard it being sung by your roommate in the shower, or in the Court of North Carolina on your way to class, or maybe your Facebook wall was spammed with a link to the video. “Friday,” a new hit song by year old breakout star Rebecca Black, has officially gone viral.
The music video received over nine million hits on YouTube within a week of its publication. The video currently has over 30 million views, eclipsing even the videos of Justin Bieber.
Black has been compared to Justin Bieber, who has paved the way for young, fresh artists to find their time to shine. The teen’s popularity, though, is double-sided. Her single has been ridiculed on Yahoo! as being the “worst song ever,” and may people at first thought it was a satirical joke.
In the song, Black narrates her daily routine as she gets ready to go to school. Her video is comprised of her dilemma of which seat in her friends’ convertible she should sit in and stating the obvious order of the days of the week in relation to Friday. The lyrics to the song were spray painted in scattered locations in the Free Expression Tunnel on Friday.
Martha Kome, a sophomore in biological sciences, at first thought the song was a gag.
“I was laughing and shaking my head, like, ‘Are they for real?’, ” Kome said. “But I kind of feel bad for the girl, with all the ridicule she’s getting for the song and all. At the same time, what can you expect when you spend half the song contemplating whether you want the front or the back seat?”
There have been many parodies of the song already. One changes the repeated chorus of “Friday” to “fried eggs,” mocking Black’s auto-tuned voice.
Josh Hamilton, a senior in science education, found the music video unbearable.
“I seriously thought Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber had a child and this was her,” Hamilton said. “She is a horrible singer and even auto-tune couldn’t fix that. I couldn’t survive watching the whole video in one sitting, so I divided it up into bearable portions of awful.”
Michael Atkins, a sophomore in psychology and political science, was shown the video by some of his friends.
“I thought that it had to be a Saturday Night Live skit or some sort of joke,” Atkins said. “However, once I found out that it was a serious music video, I couldn’t believe it.”
Atkins believes such popularity is just a fever of the time.
“People our age are always bashing Justin Bieber, but that certainly hasn’t prevented him from producing music. Publicity is publicity, good or bad. These people are getting their names out whether you are telling your friends how awesome a song is or how awful it is,” Atkins said.
Overall, it seems young artists are a new trend in the music industry. Jenna Rose is another pre-teen sensation who has a hit single at only 12 years old. Critics found her song “My Jeans” on the same level as Black’s “Friday.” Rose’s hit talks about how celebrities like Hannah Montana and Ashley Tisdale are wearing the same designer jeans as her.
“When it comes to the teenie boppers and their ‘hit songs’ I feel it is just like the old days of *NSYNC and Britney Spears,” Hamilton said. “Disney just seems to exploit their talents a lot earlier, thus reaching a younger fan base. And the lyrics these so-called ‘artists’ choose all seem to use grade school grammar and repetition. All Black does is repeat ‘Friday’ over and over, just like Bieber does with ‘Baby’ in his song.”
Hamilton calls the new popular trend an epidemic.
“I mean, apparently there are a lot of diseases going around,” Hamilton said. “We started with Beiber Fever, which apparently is an STD that only affects young females. Something should be done to stop this before it becomes a pandemic like SARS or swine flu.”
Black’s “Friday” became a phenomenon within three days of it being on YouTube, and it racked up hits over time. The single hit the top 100 chart on iTunes within a day of its release.
The whole “Friday” story began when Black’s mother paid a company called ARK Music Factory $2,000 to produce a music video with hopes of making her daughter a star. The song was one of two songs Black recorded with ARK, and in an article in The Daily Beast, Black said that she chose “Friday” because it was appropriate for her age group.
”The other song was about adult love—I haven’t experienced that yet,” Black said. “‘Friday’ is about hanging out with friends, having fun. I felt like it was my personality in that song.”
Atkins was also able to see “Friday” from a more charitable perspective.
“While some people are extremely annoyed by the fact that this girl can’t figure out which freaking seat to sit in even though there is only one open,” Atkins said, “or because none of her friends appear old enough to drive, there are probably some people who actually find this song appealing. If you really never want to see another music video come out by Rebecca Black, the best thing you can do is stop talking about it. You are only feeding the fire.”
Another issue with the music video is the appearance of ARK Music Factory producer Patrice Wilson rapping, assumedly going to the same party as Black and her friends. The video is criticized because of Black partying at such a young age, and for a grown adult male to be attending as well makes it seem worse to some viewers.
Natalie Rojano, a junior in psychology, was among those who were skeptical of the video at first.
“My initial reaction was, ‘Is this an ad for Baby Gap? Oh crap, it’s real?’ ” Rojano said. “How is this possible? She must be Jack Black’s niece or something.”
YouTube’s ability to make overnight stars, however, was not lost on Rojano.
“Honestly, these videos [like “Friday”] are inspiring in some way,” Rojano said. “I now know that if I really wanted to I can whip out my camera and record myself making a sandwich, while nodding my head, smiling, and having my friends say ‘yeah!’ every thirty seconds, and in a week I’ll be famous.”
Rojano adds she would be out there making a YouTube video herself, except for a little thing called “Dignity.”
And now, with a new pre-teen pop icon in the works, a new slogan is taking over the web.
A Black fan was recently quoted on Twitter as saying, “Forget Bieber Fever, I’ve Got the Black Plague.”
