Rebecca Black vs The Internet
In case you weren’t paying attention (or were distracted by, I don’t know, important things) Rebecca Black has become something of an internet sensation.
The short story: Rebecca Black’s mother paid a company $4000 to produce a music video for 13 year old Rebecca, which was then released on Feb 10 2011. It received a thousand YouTube views in the first month and around 87 million in the second. Yes, those numbers are correct.
How is it? Well, I’ll let you see for yourself (this is totally optional. I’ll explain why below):
(If you watched it) did you catch all that? Obviously terrible lyrics, auto-tuned to hell & back, and what are thirteen year olds doing driving anyway?
The Internet’s response was succinct:
The criticism quickly mounted, and the song instantly became the most hated song on YouTube (1.7 million negative votes, and climbing).
The great thing about six billion creative monkeys being clustered on a tiny rock is that you can always rely on them to be, well, creative.
And create they did. Now, this is where the Rebecca Black story gets genuinely entertaining (rather than merely cringingly confusing).
Remember back when I said watching it was optional? Rather than waste 3:48 of your life let me save you some time. Here’s the entire vid in 50 seconds (you won’t miss any detail):
Got that?
(Oh I’m sorry, you wanted to waste your day? Ok, here’s the slowed down version. It’s 15 minutes long. No I am not embedding that, hell no)
How about the censored version?
Oddly, this make it all seem very much more appealing.
Or if the song was interpreted by a (very) bad lip reader?
Including such delightful lyrics as “Have I brought this chicken for us to thaw?” and yes, nazis are mentioned (does that Godwin this post?)
The nominative sequel “Saturday” (with an incredibly life like simulacra)
Manages to capture the essence of the original quite effectively.
Or Bob Dylan’s version (obviously not him, but oh boy, so wish it was)
which while unfortunately highlighting the banality of the lyrics, is actually quite a fantastic song.
Or the most utterly disturbing (yet equally brilliant version) yet. Please do not, NOT let small children watch this (it won’t embed, unfortunately).
A couple of slightly cute versions: The Ice Cube/Chris Rock version (she sings, they act). Finally, her singing it acoustically (no, she really didn’t deserve that much auto-tune)
Ok, enough of this. If you want more, search YouTube, there are currently 22,000 (yes, thousand) videos variously mocking, praising, reproducing or otherwise dissecting her song. Yes, all created in the last month. Oh human monkey people, you’re so awesome.
