It’s a familiar story in our digital age. Despite the fact that both the music video and the song were directed, written, and produced by the now-defunct Ark Music Factory, Black became the face of “Friday,” and the main target of the internet’s vitriol. Now viewed over 129 million times-because YouTube doesn’t have the metrics to measure ironic plays and hate clicks-“Friday” yeeted Black from general anonymity to all-too-easy punchline at a dizzying pace. Love it or hate it, you can’t deny the tenacity and success-or infamy-of Black’s first bonafide hit, “Friday.” The bubblegum-anthem entered the pantheon of pop culture in early-2011 when it ascended the viral staircase of social media and first implored us to “fun, fun, think about fun.”
And with those words, I sent a pang! through my own chest. “That ‘Friday’ girl?” I asked out loud and to absolutely no one as I pressed play. It is absolutely sure of itself, both in tone and direction, and as a result, “Anyway” is immediately enjoyable and effortlessly playable: a truth which took me entirely by surprise. Ethereal and light, it follows in the footsteps of indie-pop tinted with an 80’s-nostalgia while never being overwhelmed or overshadowed by the company it keeps.
With airy synths and hypnotic percussion, “Anyway” is a single that simply shimmers. It was terrible, it was meme-able it was inescapable.Īnd maybe it’s this, the song’s vise-like permanence in our collective memory and not-so-distant internet culture, that led me to commit such a cardinal sin when I noticed Black’s name attached to “Anyway,” a certified bop. And in defense of the person I was in 2011-though an idiot-at the time, Black’s only body of work was the viral “Friday”: a song as bewildering as it was objectively bad, which I say with gentle sympathy.īecause before “Baby Shark,” there was “Friday.” An anti-song that managed to wiggle its way on to the Billboard Top 100 list despite of-or perhaps, because of-its abundant autotune, trite lyrics and pulsating oomph-oomph that echoed the cheap synths of a mediocre man’s club remix. Because, with all of my “quality” opinions and carefully curated quirks, you would have only ever caught me listening to Rebecca Black ironically-or more dramatically, over my dead body. In short: she doesn’t, but I wouldn’t figure this out until years later.
And I wanted to achieve all of this with an air of casual mystery that whispered “how does she do it?” I wanted to be both music scout and playlist curator I wanted to introduce you to your favorite band-because you certainly wouldn’t find them by listening to the radio-and shepherd you through new genres. I wanted to be an enigma, but relatable: the kind of manic pixie that could throw down in a mosh pit, but also had a “Best of Céline Dion” compilation CD in the car. I was desperate to seem cool and other -in those ways that naturally complement youth, with all its awkward graces and benign ignorance-and a cultivated catalog of deep-cuts and obscure bands seemed like the easiest way to communicate just how cool and other I was. If you’d told me nearly a decade ago that I would be jamming to Rebecca Black in 2019, I would have paired a devastatingly effective eye roll with a flippant “yeah, okay.” I won’t deny that I was an insufferable music snob in my late teens and early twenties.
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