Chances are you heard overnight teenage pop star Rebecca Black’s “Friday” over our recent Spring Break.
Like drinking Four Lokos or hiking A Mountain, the YouTube sensation was the perfect complement to that week of carefree debauchery, followed closely by semester-long shame and penicillin treatments.
This Los Angeles-based Ark Music Factory-produced bug spread like swine flu, whether it was frat bros and sorority girls doing the intoxication shuffle on Mission Beach, hipsters listening in as they took another swig of the ironic Kool-Aid, or that really weird kid in your hall who stayed in the dorms the whole time playing Dragon Age II. Everyone was down on “Friday.”
Following the trails blazed by pioneers like Stephanie Meyer and The Black Eyed Peas, Ark Music Factory knew exactly how to capture the hearts and minds of the American people: by appealing to the spoiled 13-year-old teenage girl inside us all.
Remember wannabe Cat Power playing Alanis Morissette covers in front of Urban Outfitters on Mill? When you get tired of playing for pocket change, appeal to the stupid. (Read: the people going to Hooters).
It can’t be that hard. Lyrically, even Ke$ha couldn’t stomach it. The recipe is simple.
First, take hefty handfuls of the words “fun” and “party.” Then mix in an out-of-place, D.A.R.E. PSA-quality rap verse.
Smother all of this in some good old-fashioned auto-tune vomit, and pour the cesspool into a blender. Set to high for 3:30 minutes on Billboard Top 40 mode.
Yet to truly understand the magic of “Friday” one must see the “music” video. The fact that it looks like a missing shelved episode of “Lizzie McGuire” aside, it’s unintentional awkwardness that makes the production so … magical.
Diving in the lore of “Friday,” we open with Rebecca waking up and immediately craving cereal, because she is also down on breakfast.
Walking to the bus stop, she forgoes riding in the vehicle with the licensed driver for the packed convertible her fellow 13-year-old peers are joy riding in.
She questions whether she wants the front seat, despite it already being taken. Screw you blonde girl, this is Rebecca’s world, you’re just visiting.
The next scene has the kids speeding down a Los Angeles highway, with Black and co. spitting in Death’s face as they sit on the backseat headrests.
They flail their arms like epileptics as the horrible pop beat continues to — and I’m already bored. Basically, it’s a Bratz commercial with slightly less plastic.
However, it’s producer Clarence Jey’s, aka “Fat Usher,” appearance in the video that raises the most questions.
Why is this large 40-plus man hanging out with 13-year old girls? Why is he tailing their car down the highway like a blinged-out specter? Why is he spouting lyrics between chews that would make will.i.am. laugh? Is R. Kelly hiding in the back seat?
These inquires aside, it is undeniable that Ark Music Factory has found the equation to success. Just look at the company Myspace! According to Reuters, Black’s mother paid Ark Music Factory $2,000 for the production of the video.
What a small price to pay for making your daughter’s teenage years even more awkward!
Reach David at dsydiong@asu.edu
