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[Amor de Cosmos]

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I don't think there's anything much more fascinating behind the Social Media phenomenon than 'millions of people are constantly plugged into social media nowadays and this sort of thing therefore gets passed around very quickly.'

I think there's a bit more to it than that. Social media, the blogosphere and internet communication in general tends to privilege extremes; of content and, even more, of opinion. It just doesn't do the middle ground, or balanced discourse very well (this site is way better than most and we occasionally have problems.) I'm not entirely sure why this should be the case. It may be that sheer numbers predicate it, how does a moderate opinion gain a listen when so many extreme voices are screaming at each other? Or it could be that a middle way requires more skill to argue and seems to preclude passion, so remains silent. In this case the impression created is that the entire world LOVES!!!!!! or HATES!!!! Rebecca and her song, when, in fact most of us either can't be arsed one way or another, or hold a view that wouldn't get a hearing unless we pitched it at a deranged level, which by definition would contradict what we were saying.

[WOM]

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Brno wrote:

It's just a song, and a sucky song, and therefore dislikeable. I wouldn't mistake the viral aspect of it with the intensity of the feelings it is provoking.

OMG. You so totally don't get virability. The only stuff that gets forwarded is stuff you like enough to endorse or hate enough to deride. Charlie biting his brother's finger. Skittles commercials. Goofy dancing. Suicidal downhill bike racing.

It's the "Holy fuck, Amanda, you gotta see this!!!" factor that creates anything viral in the first place.

[delicatemoth]

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Well I'm glad Taylor flagged this up on Facebook or I'd have totally missed it, as I'd wrongly assumed that this thread was about Something Horrible.

It's queasily fab in a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation way. It's a great use of sodding autotune, crushing the voice into a thin piece of plastic rather than attempting to 'enhance' the vocals into something singery.

And how are the lyrics more banal than most other pop songs? I love the part where she runs through the days of the week. Beats "You're my brown eyed girl" or "All is quiet on New Year's Day" all ends up.

[ursus arctos]

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Charlie Booker weighs in.

And it immediately becomes the most viewed item on guardian.co.uk.

Booker also comes up with a fact that I had been wondering about. Black's parents paid ARK USD 2000 for the song and video (presumably, ARK kept most/all of the rights, which is why all of these pieces on her "becoming a millionaire" out of the song are codswallop).

This has always been the angle that most interested me, because it is for me emblematic of a trend that has become very prominent in US "culture" while we were gone. The "arts" in the US have always been much more commercial than their counterparts elsewhere (largely due to different funding models), but what is new to me is the lack of shame over purchased celebrity. The percentage of advertising in The New York Review of Books or New York Times Book Review coming from "vanity presses" has increased exponentially in the last decade, and (if random Upper West Side conversations are any guide), they are no longer just for conspiracy theorists and obsessives who have been working on manuscripts for 20 years. I've encountered multiple instances of people bragging about getting their book published while eliding over the fact that they paid thousands for the privilege.

And that's before I get to Paris Hilton and Kardashians, or Tiger Parents buying their kids' recitals at Carnegie Hall.

On the one hand, I really don't care. On the other, it is does trouble me on some level for what it says about our society.

[Taylor]

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Another shagged-out article by Brooker. He's so frustrating - smart, funny chap with sound opinions, spreading himself so very thin that most of his output is worthless. My main problem with him used to be that however amusingly he rephrased the silent minority's thoughts on this subject or that, he never seemed to tell me anything I didn't know, or offer a thought which hadn't previously occurred to me (or anyone else with a working brain). Really good writers can do that, you know. These days I kind of sympathise with him - he's clearly far too busy for his own good. The last bit of that article absolutely reeks of looming deadline, as does much of his recent Guardian stuff. We've all been there, rushing it out and hoping it'll do. Just seems like that's become CB's style... I don't rate him half as highly as many seem to, but I know he's better than this.

Perhaps the real problem is that journalists now have to work themselves into the ground to maintain a decent standard of living, which has a hugely negative effect on the quality of their output - then again, I doubt Charlie's short of a penny. He could probably afford to ease up a bit.

Incidentally, I skimmed the comments and found this:

Jarvis Cocker was quite good on this one, on his BBC 6, Radio Sunday Service, show, too.

Thanks man. Here I am, toiling at the coal face of meaning, and... no, forget it. If I think too long about this comment appearing under a Charlie Brooker Guardian column, I won't want my tea.

[Renart]

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[axel]

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Full orchestra version, will this never end!

[imp]

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My youngest (12) just alerted me to this - searching around on YouTube we couldn't find the actual video until I said, Hang on, I reckon there was something about this on OTF.

So anyway, she and her contemporaries think it sucks because of the lyrics, but they don't want to kill the lass. "I thought it was a piss-take of other pop songs," she said. To me, it's the next logical step on from Aqua's Barbie Girl, which I recall being mesmerised by in a bar on several big screens in Sion in 1997, sitting on my own bored and lonely in southern Switzerland while researching a travel guide, a job that is worse than cleaning out the bogs in an old people's home. And I thought, "Fucking christing hell, what the fucking fuck?" and then it made sense. Cheap but professional. Stupid but catchy. Self-knowingly ironic, but with irresistible mass appeal.

Friday, though, can not be bettered for its extreme, brilliant falsity. It's car crash pop, where you gawp, and you can't stop looking, and you want to say, 'Take it all back, it's a mistake, you need to get your lives back to where you were before, sitting in a bedroom saying Wouldn't it be cool to make a song and a video about how cool and exciting Friday is?, and then you never do anything about it because you're normal kids who can't be arsed or don't have the money, or you grow out of it within hours. I don't care how rich or spoilt the kid might be, the outside world's too cruel for this kind of exposure. On the other hand you think, Well, good luck to her. Nearly 65 million hits, if that's what you want.

On another level, and as a father of two teenage girls, it's touchingly innocent, and if either of my kids were subject to an international hate and laughter campaign just because they made a song about how much they love Friday night, I'd be heartbroken.

[G-Man]

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On another level, and as a father of two teenage girls, it's touchingly innocent, and if either of my kids were subject to an international hate and laughter campaign just because they made a song about how much they love Friday night, I'd be heartbroken.

Best paragraph of the thread.

[Sam]

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Agreed, imp.

Ursus, Brno: his surname is Brooker.

As you were.

[Taylor]

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Someone put my radio thing about RB up on YouTube. Just the one comment so far, which begins "What an utterly pretentious retard." Excellent!

[Sam]

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They're revulsed and all, Taylor. I didn't even know that was a verb.

[danielmak]

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To twist imp's last point a bit, it's funny because 10-13 year olds are clearly the target market for this song. And it's a song that is a lot easier to swallow compared to a majority of songs that interest tweens, songs that most parents probably don't want their kids to hear (i.e., with a focus on drug use and sex). And from that standpoint the can't wait until it's Friday so we can party (and party just being a synonym for having fun vs. every other performer who is referencing getting drunk or high) doesn't seem so bad. But as a parent of a 12-year-old daughter, this desire to shelter also buts up against wanting to expose her to something smart and aesthetically adventurous, which is certainly not this song. It's a tough balance.

At the end of the day, though, the song itself will be forgotten in another month and that's because it's just not very sophisticated (although that Cocteau Twins sounding remix that Taylor linked was pretty cool). Over the years I have become way less concerned about this kind of manufactured pop than I am about rock bands or so-called alternative rock bands that have been manufactured for us. I'd rather someone hear this Friday song and be interested in it than hear Good Charlotte and think they've discovered punk.

[G-Man]

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I agree with every word of this...

And do help yourself to the weekdays mix.

[Incandenza]

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Somehow I knew that "Black Friday" would be in there.

[Renart]

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Looks good! Thanks, G.Man! Were Thursday songs the hardest to find?

[G-Man]

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Yes. Not much on Thursdays at all. I had four, three of which I used. Bowie got left out.

Sundays, on the other hand...

[Jimmy Bignutz]

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A nice tribute here:

[Fussbudget]

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Thursday Feels Fine by Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes is absolutely brilliant, sadly there doesn't seem to be anywhere on the internet where you can listen to it which is a shame

[G-Man]

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So, innocent 13-year-olds singing about how they love Friday is fine. Taking it to an indie record label and shelling out thousands of dollars -- (when you were 13, would the notion of spending 4 grand on a lark have struck you as at all...odd?) -- to make yourself an internet star means you've just sold out your innocence. Knowingly, if you had two brain cells to rub together.

She went to a vanity record label to have a song put out. Most likely, it was a bit of a lark more than a stab at selling out our soul to The Man. Is it inconceivable that her parents aren't figure-skating mums but just wanted to splash out money they could afford to let their pribncess do something exciting after doing her homework and washing the dishes?

Vanity record labels, like their publishing counterparts, share the risk of production, hoping to break even with most of their output, and counting on the occasional release being a solid seller.

Black's record went viral not because of genius promotion, but because the Internet was trending this as a supposedly horrific song (as you did when you started this thread).

And even if a 13-year-old sells her soul -- what the hell doers she know about selling her soul -- telling her that she is internationally hated and that her death would be a welcome event is plainly indefensible.

[G-Man]

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But isn't that how it became viral in the first place?

The vanity label reference is pertinent when you ascribe the fame/notoriety of Rebecca Black to a conscious marketing campaign. A vanity label doesn't usually have the reach to do that (else they'd have many more hits). The effect of the record was entirely unpredictable. In fact, the more predictable outcome would have been obscurity, with perhaps a handful of records shifted locally.

More likely, the wealthy Black family bought a song and video for their daughter as a fun adventure, with no idea how big it would become. Other parents might buy their daughters a pony or a trip in Europe. Others buy them a song. The existence of vanity labels suggest that many parents do that.

I suppose the parents Black think their daughter is super talented. I think my son is a wonderful guitarist. And living in a world populated by so many successful pop stars with even less talent than Rebecca, I don't think they were irrational or somehow reckless.

Whatever the case may be, the bottom line is that the attacks on the girl do not represent our generation's finest moment.

[G-Man]

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The obvious difference is that there is a history of generational lowpoints in the pop charts, but no precedent of a 13-yeat-old kid being as reviled as young Rebecca.

In any case, you are overstating how bad the record is.