Rebecca Black burst into the public consciousness in 2011, when ‘Friday’ spread online like few things ever had before. In a matter of weeks, a single tweet calling her debut “the worst video ever made” spiraled into countless parodies, late night TV fodder, and a 6-week run on the Billboard Hot 100.Nearly a decade later, ‘Friday’ has garnered over 142 million views on YouTube, and Black’s place in music and Internet history has been cemented. TikTok dance challenges are now standard fare for major label releases, as music executives dream of replicating just a fraction of the attention ‘Friday’ so effortlessly garnered. As days blend together for a world in quarantine, Friday’s core lyrical theme has taken on an entirely new meaning. Black’s listing off successive days of the weekend, and frivolously announcing the arrival of Friday now reads less like obvious, empty pop lyrics, and more like a subversion of the concept of the calendar, asking us to ponder just how meaningless our conventional definition of time is.No longer deciding between the front or the back seat, VICE met Rebecca Black as the singer sits firmly in the driver’s seat of her career. She told us about her experience ‘going viral’ at 13, and what she has planned for new music in 2020.Watch the full episode of FAMEish: Rebecca Black on VICE’s YouTube channel.
The Story Behind 'Friday' by Rebecca Black
The 'Friday' singer reflects on becoming a meme at age 13