You may remember the esteemed Rebecca Black, singer of the autotuned and lyrically shallow Friday, the song which rocketed her into stardom for all the wrong reasons. She was essentially the laughingstock of 2011 as the utterly horrible song (however very catchy) couldn’t get out of people’s heads – going down in history as the 8th most disliked video of all time, racking up a massive 3.5 million thumbs-downs. As the song mainly consists of Black having trouble making decision of whether she should sit in the front or back seat (which discernibly makes no sense due to the fact that the music video displays a person in the driver’s seat and in the passenger’s seat, logically limiting her to only sitting in the back seat), and the repetition of the days of the week or the phrases “party” and “fun”, the video is an all-encompassing representation of what the vast population seems to hate about pre-teens.

However, I am here in defense of Rebecca Black. Although Friday is unarguably a terrible song, it is an element of pop culture that defined the age of the early 2010’s, and, I hate to say it, the ongoing teasing of Rebecca by virtually every American brought the population together on one widely agreed-upon fact: the song Friday sucked. As 13-year-old Rebecca, an aspiring pop star determined to reach her goal, was given the option to exchange a few thousand dollars to record a song and be the star of its accompanying music video, a song which Ark Music Factory claimed would guarantee her stardom. I guess they weren’t wrong, however this was not the kind of stardom she desired; and as she first attempted to “laugh off” the haters, this later took a turn for the worst as she spiraled downhill and dropped out of school. This can imaginably be an exceptionally dark time for an impressionable pre-teen only occupied by the plethora of hate comments made accessible to her daily. 

When Rebecca turned 18, she was looking for a fresh start as she moved to Hollywood, gained some tattoos, and found people to surround herself that lifted her up, and she began taking her time writing her own music. She has continued her musical journey and actually released a few songs over the years as she naturally continues her youtube platform of 1.4 million subscribers and 800,000 instagram followers. Overall, Rebecca Black has been given a bad rap, and was really just an innocent, naive 13-year-old girl with the same old dreams of becoming a pop star that we all underwent as children, however with the will to act on them. The 22 year old is currently thriving and still shamelessly harbors Friday on her personal YouTube channel, unable to let go of the 134 million views that made her around $1 million dollars. So don’t hate on Rebecca Black, because at the end of the day, when you laugh at her, she and her $1.5 million net worth are laughing right back at you.