A few months ago a 13-year old girl named Rebecca Black became a YouTube sensation with ‘Friday’, a much-maligned but very catchy pop song that became a viral hit that garnered a massive amount of views but had more ‘dislikes’ than ‘likes’. People hated the irritating vocals, obnoxious use of Auto-Tune to cover very limited vocal skills, and shockingly awful lyrics … yet they couldn’t keep themselves from watching it over and over again!
Well, it is almost four months later and after much drama involving rights struggles, report of parents looking to milk their 13-year old cash cow, and more … Rebecca Black is Back! Her new song is called ‘My Moment’, and is an obvious shot at those who criticize her success with ‘Friday’. Here is the video:
One of the most engaging things about Friday was that it was appallingly bad in a way like Biz Markie’s ‘Just a Friend’ – you knew it was garbage yet it stuck in your head.
But ‘My Moment’ is neither very good nor very bad – it is just bland. The song is stylistically close to a ‘power ballad’, something you might expect from an American Idol finalist going into the last episode (and yes, those songs are dreadful). There is still WAY too much auto-tune, which is really discordant and makes you think that the poor girl is a really terrible singer (she has actually shown that she has a pretty nice voice in interviews). In fact, some of the third-step transitions sound like they have been forced so hard it sounds more like a synthesizer than a vocal!
There is no hook, no ‘so bad they’re funny’ lines to grab on to (like ‘tomorrow is Saturday … Sunday comes after that … but it’s Friday …’), no shock factor or anything else to make it worth watching. I forced myself through it once, and my younger son checked out the auto-tune on a second listen … but other than that there is just no appeal. My boys labeled it as GPT – ‘Generic Pop Trash’, and differentiate it from Friday, which they call ‘so awful you HAVE to love it’, and found this one disappointing.
So after being an internet sensation for the most hated YouTube video … Rebecca Black is now just a girl with little demonstrated musical talent but with parents who can indulge their daughter with a $4,000 recording session while we are still in the worst economic state since the Great Depression, and whose fame peaked at 13. She seems like a sweet kid in the interviews, and I hope that she manages to pursue her dreams without obnoxious people threatening her and handlers treating her like an ATM machine.