By: James Cassar
Move over, Justin Bieber: another girl is threatening to dethrone you as the queen of horrible YouTube pop phenomenon. Yes, even younger than that pretty-eyed prima donna superstar, Rebecca Black has overloaded YouTube with incessantly liberal Auto-Tune use and recklessly infantile lyrics that has left both listeners of Ke$ha and Bring Me the Horizon scratching their heads and violently typing hate-filled comments onto the ‘official’ music video’s comment forum.
Let’s start with the upstart prepubescent’s age: Rebecca Black is thirteen. Sure, American radio has felt the childish sting of young pop princes and princesses for years to appeal to the 15-and-under demographic, but hey, does that merit her entrance into the airwaves – and now, the information superhighway – as justifiably okay? No.
So let’s analyze Rebecca’s pride and joy: a song she recorded with some foggy organization known as ARK for $2,000 that included a music video and digital download package deal (oh, what a steal!) about the fifth day of the week and partying with her eighth-grade compadres. Oh, and eating cereal. Out of all possible topics, fickle Rebecca picks cereal. Music’s history has shown us you can write respectable odes to walruses and purple haze, but this isn’t respectable. This is a downright abomination to the music industry’s vastly grotesque armpit – it scrapes the bottom of the barrel like a scavenging vulture in virtually every category. Commence rant.
So Antares has made gold-encrusted suitcases to hold their billion-dollar fortunes after priming the careers of both rappers T-Pain and Lil’ Wayne – and ‘partycore’ pioneers Breathe Carolina and Attack Attack! alike with their revered Auto-Tune magic pitch-correction software that transforms a horrible dying cat into a fantastic American Idol contender with their heavily adulterated vocalizing.
If this song was a delicious Eggo waffle (I use the word ‘delicious’ lightly; this song is gagtastic) and the pitch-correction was sickeningly sweet Mrs. Butterworth’s, the waffle would be indefinitely submerged in goopy caloric overload – Rebecca Black does not have a range or redeemable pipes even with the studio earlobe life-ring, however, and listeners frantically pulse towards the mute button in an attempt to stop from bleeding profusely as their poor cochlea bones screech cries of mercy. This is not a glowing hyperbole.
Also, let’s analyze the video and lyrics in tandem. Somebody tell me why a bunch of thirteen-year olds (okay, benefit of the doubt added and they’re fourteen) are piled into their mom’s Jeep Liberty (presumably stolen from their oblivious parents)? And is Rebecca so concerned about where she sits? Kick it in whichever seat is open, little girl. And judging by the number of kids in the car, there wasn’t really one open….well, maybe in the trunk.
Oh yeah, and the ‘rap’ from our illustrious cameo? The writer of the blasted tune. Let’s give him a round of applause. When ‘Baby’ topped YouTube charts – there were as many dislikes as there were best view counts; as a matter of fact – the world stood with their mouth agape as this boy with a freakish falsetto, sang to the girl he’s too young to get. When ‘Friday’ sped out of the gate and achieved inconceivable amounts of infamy for its terrible everything, the world stood with their fingers pointed dead at their uvulas, hoping for a hasty escape from this pitchy teenage dream.