It’s Friday, Friday… every Friday I think about Rebecca Black and her song, and how she, as a teenager, made it as a serious undertaking and how America made it a laughing stock, and she received phone and email death threats. What kind of animal sends death threats to a teenage girl? The same kind that sends death threats to anyone – a criminal who needs to be locked up.
The song achieved an international reputation thanks to famous comedian Michael J. Nelson drawing attention to the video, calling it the worst video ever made. Others piled on, and Rebecca was an international laughing stock. Oddly, there’s no mention on Michael J. Nelson’s page of being the cause of Rebecca receiving death threats. I’ve always wondered if he ever reached out to her. I bet he didn’t.
With all the hate directed towards Friday, I’d like to point out that even though I think it’s a bad song, it’s got nothing on today’s top offerings:
It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend, weekend
— Rebecca Black, Friday
Yeah, you got that yummy-yum
That yummy-yum, that yummy-yummy
Yeah, you got that yummy-yum
That yummy-yum, that yummy-yummy
— Justin Bieber, Yummy
You tell me which song is stupid.
If you put any creative product out into the world, there will be those who want to tear you down. 99 times out of 100, it’s people who’ve never dared to create anything, let alone put it out there. It takes guts and a thick skin to publish. It takes cowardice and low moral character to send death threats to a kid.
But there’s an old saying that “There’s no such thing as bad press,” and Rebecca Black is now a YouTuber with over a million subscribers, which means she can make a living at it. She has continued to release music, she’s appeared with celebrities, she has a small but very loyal fan base… she has an actual career. Things could have turned out very, very differently. Good for you, Rebecca Black.
