Most of you who have not been living under a rock as of late are probably very familiar with the online sensation “Friday”, by 13 year old Rebecca Black.
The song first got its taste of exposure thanks to Daniel Tosh (from Tosh.0 fame) posting it on his blog, regarding terrible song lyrics, from what I gather. After that, within days, the video had millions of views, and is still weeks later one of the top worldwide trending topics on Twitter. By all accounts, I would be happy that a 13 year old musician was getting exposure, but then you listen to the song and realize it’s not positive exposure.
Almost everyone knows the lyrics are what can only be described as written by a 6 year old who hasn’t quite figured out how to write logically and coherently. But the lyrics were actually being wrote by an adult ‘songwriting team’ known as The Ark Factory. Delving deeper into this, Black’s parents PAID The Ark Factory over $2,000 to record, write and produce the song, as well as shooting the video for it. So basically, it is parents with lots of money to spend, probably forcing their daughter to do this so they can also get a ton of money off of it from their pre-pubescent child. Shame the song sucks though, parents.
It’s clear that the Ark Factory are looking for the female Justin Bieber. The similarities are staggering, especially on the “Friday” song. Simplistic, synth-pop driven music with a ‘special appearance’ by a hip hop artist, and a nice serving of auto-tune (which I will get into later). However, if this song was a flash in the pan, a few days of chatter then slowly fizzled out, then I would be fine with it. It is several weeks since it became popular, and it’s only becoming more popular by the day. This worries me.
Initially, I laughed my ass off when I listened to this song. I shared it on my Facebook and Twitter, and people similarly found it funny or ridiculous. But, now I think with all the press the song has received, including an appearance on Jay Leno by Rebecca herself, our society has, albeit subtly, accepted the song as a feasible representation of music. If this is what mainstream music is going to be like in the future, I worry for future generations and their development of musical talent.
Not only are schools in the US cutting back on arts funding, kids and adults today can make songs within minutes, using computer software. While I find software like Cubase, Reason and Pro Tools to be a great aid for making and producing music, I feel that too many artists today are relying on it, and laziness takes over. It’s especially bad for those with no musical talent at all – because creating a song using computers is real easy. Once something ‘sounds good’, they usually leave it be and don’t work on it much further. After all, all they have to do is hit the undo button if they don’t like anything they do choose to add to it. Simple, right?
We are enabling talentless morons because it’s funny, meanwhile ignoring those with real talent, because it’s maybe ‘boring’ to some. I have never been a fan of the YouTube musician – I’ve never understood why anyone finds it at all interesting to watch some guy in a room playing along with a song, usually with highly distorted sound and a bad picture quality. ‘Sorry for the shitty quality’ is usually on most video descriptions. Here’s a thought – how about you wait a while, save some money, buy a good video camera and mixing desk if you’re dead serious about people ‘hearing you’? Some people deserve to be heard, and the internet provides them with that, but the vast majority of musicians online today do NOT deserve to be heard, because I feel they do not have the talent to be heard, but usually these people are because it’s ‘funny’ and an ‘epic fail’. Is society becoming more accepting of people and their failures? Seems like it.
I’m not saying that music should be serious and only performed by those with talent, but there has to be a line drawn. I believe the average musician or wannabe musician can HAVE fun, but ONLY when they have the talent to do so. Those who have plenty of fun and write bad music are usually the ones most heard, because of them being obnoxious and ridiculous. Meanwhile those who write better music but perhaps do not have as much fun are deemed ‘boring’ and ‘buzz killers’. People today are more ADD than ever, they strive for the latest fads, latest technology, latest funny YouTube video, then, like junkies, search for their next fix of fun when the fad or meme dies down.
Coming back to the subject, The Ark Factory did little to no publicity of Friday, and all it took was one comedian to post the link on his blog, and millions followed. The power of word of mouth today is significant, despite the words probably coming from a screen than an actual person, but I digress. There are plenty of people to blame here for this horrible song and its acceptance into society. The songwriters, the parents who paid the money in the first place, and the general ‘dumbed down’ population.
There’s really no point in analyzing the lyrics, because they are too nonsensical. But, how the lyrics are approached are what really bothers me. The verses are monotonous, almost robotic in delivery, with heavy use of auto-tune, or as I like to call it, the cancer to the art and heart of music. Her voice is whiny, and has this weird country/valley girl hybrid, much like similar autotune queen Kesha (no I’m not doing the $ sign for her s). Seriously, if auto-tune is going to be featured in all pop music today, there is no point in the person even trying. It can make the most tone deaf singer turn into, well, someone who isn’t tone deaf. If this is another ‘fad’, it’s a horrible one, but I can accept it if it will run its course eventually. Much like heavily reverbed and gated drums in the 1980s were like, the fad died down. That one wasn’t anywhere near as bad though.
For many years, I have genuinely worried about the state of the commercial music business. This song is yet another stab in the heart of mainstream music, and I’m not sure if commercial music will ever recover. Within days of the song being released on iTunes, the song was downloaded over 1 MILLION TIMES. We laugh at the song, we ridicule it, we buy it, Black, her parents and The Ark Factory laugh all the way to the bank. Any respectable musician, artist or band would LOVE that form of attention. But, now they have to make an epic fail of a song with stupid lyrics and badly green-screened music videos. It makes me sick.
A lot of you might be thinking ‘why are you always going on about commercial music?’ – well, simple answer, because it’s where a lot of kids start hearing music. The Beatles early music was deemed commercial music back in their day, and those songs are some of the best ever written. Now we have talentless teens or slutty girls with autotuned crap and a song that was written in probably 10 minutes. Nothing wrong with writing a song in 10 minutes, so long as it’s GOOD.
I’m 24 years old, coming 25 in July, I have been involved in music my whole life. Ever since I was a child all I wanted to do was perform music to an audience. I have been lucky to have done so for pretty much my entire life, from playing school concerts to playing to big and small crowds in rock clubs. I still feel like I have a LOT to learn, and am learning new things about music and the art of performing every day, and at every gig. I’ve met some really cool people on tour, and all of the good bands I’ve saw all have the same passion and desire – to make it. Sadly, not many people seem to care about gigs anymore. The scenes are over-saturated, and unfortunately the less talented bands get farther because they know more people. Seeing a 13 year old make a terrible song get millions of hits in a few weeks angers me, simply because I have literally poured blood, sweat and a few tears, and look where it’s got me.
Apologies if I came off bitter in that last paragraph, I really am not bitter. Just angry. I know I have to keep at it and eventually I will succeed. I just hope that the general listening public just wakes up and realizes there is great music right in front of them, rather than autotuned, over-produced crap that is called commercial music today. Go out and see a local show, support local bands, make some new friends, be open-minded about new music and old music too, as well as other musical genres that you think you might hate. You never know, you might find an artist that just taps into your way of living and musical thinking.
