Apologizing for the thing I can’t stand
If you haven’t heard, dear readers, there’s a new crap sandwich in town and this shit is gourmet. It’s served on fancy artisan bread with hand cut shoestring potatoes fried in truffle infused oil and a somehow snooty pickle spear on a bed of arugula.
It’s Rebecca Black’s “Friday.”
Upon hearing how bad this song was supposed to be my curiosity bested me. The ensuing audio-visual assault left me wanting to do this.
Seriously.
It’s really bad.
And it’s been stuck in my head for days.
If you haven’t heard it yet DON’T GO HERE to discover how atrocious it is unless you want to deliberately destroy your sanity.
If you do choose to listen/watch, be forewarned. Side effects include, but are not limited to: extreme confusion, bemused but frustrated giggle fits and awkward laughter, multiple exclamations of “WTF!?”, headaches, urges to obnoxiously sing the lyrics aloud to yourself, and divorce if you play it loud enough to wake up your napping spouse. (Husband is already looking for apartments.)
In an attempt to exorcise this infectious ironic Internet phenomenon from myself, and because you’re possibly very curious about it now, I present this lyrics-and-video-play-by-play-narrative-deconstruction/commentary. It required repeated inflictions of the offensive material and I had to do shots to psych myself out before hitting play.
The song/video begins with typical optimistic buildups of “Ooh”s and “Yeah”s as we see pages of a day calendar removing themselves one by one.
Seven a.m., waking up in the morning
Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs
Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal
Seein’ everything, the time is goin’
Tickin’ on and on, everybody’s rushin’
Rebecca prepares for school. Whoop-dee-whoop. Not the most exciting set up, but I can roll with it.
Gotta get down to the bus stop
Gotta catch my bus, I see my friends (My friends)
A convertible full of attractive youngsters drives up. None of them are wearing seatbelts as they beckon to Rebecca to join them in a, “Hey, hop into the Tragic and Untimely Death-mobile” type way. Viewers may wish this to be foreshadowing, but despite the song/video being a wreck, there is (sadly) no car crash.
Kickin’ in the front seat
Sittin’ in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?
OMG! Everyone knows if you didn’t call “shotgun” you sit bitch!
This moment makes me want to punch a baby. The music implies something important is about to happen as it builds up to debut the chorus. Will it be a moment of jammin’ rewards, perhaps?
Wait for it. . .
(Chorus)
It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekend
Yeah, you mentioned that. And I would like to mention, as someone who’s had voice instruction, the way you spread your vowels when singing, “Fryeedayee”, makes me cringe.
7:45, we’re drivin’ on the highway
Suddenly it’s nighttime and Rebecca still sits bitch in back of the convertible, but she and her friends are seated on top of the car, so we know they’re really having fun.
Cruisin’ so fast, I want time to fly
Five teens in a convertible, no seatbelts, speeding, and three of them aren’t seated safely?! Where the eff is the fuzz? Or a car crash?
You know what it is
No. What? Tell me, what?!
I got this, you got this
WHAT?! What we got?!
My friend is by my right, ay
I got this, you got this
Now you know it
Don’t you tell me what I know!!
Kickin’ in the front seat
Sittin’ in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?
We covered this!
(Chorus)
Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday
Someone took her vitamin “duh.”
Today i-is Friday, Friday (Partyin’)
Yes. . . and?
We-we-we so excited
We so excited
We gonna have a ball today
Are these lyrics written by a first year foreign language student? Where are the verbs?
Tomorrow is Saturday
And Sunday comes afterwards
Yes, but what’s after Sunday? The Apocalypse? Please?!
I don’t want this weekend to end
But you said earlier you wanted time to fly! Gotta make your mind up, Rebecca.
I’d say it’s a great tune for kids (easy, clean lyrics, etc.), except I’m worried a child’s musical ear could be permanently damaged.
Plus, it’s infuriatingly catchy. If you hear it I guarantee it’ll infect your brain for a minimum of seventy-two hours and drive you mad.
And forget about antidotes. I’ve tried all of these:
And in an act of desperation, this
There is no cure.
This parody is only slightly helpful. It’s “Friday” recomposed, with lyrics as interpreted by a lip reader. It’s hilarious, but beware: the parody lyrics and original music will collide in your mind and you’ll go even more bat-crazy, but in a fun way.
There is a bright side, though, and it’s this:
It’s probably the best thing to happen to this ridiculous song.
I’d like to note that I do not intend to bash Rebecca Black. I’m sure she’s a lovely girl who’s too young to be solely responsible for how terrible this song/video turned out. Also, I’m sorry, Idler readers, if my deconstruction has made “Friday” all the more enticing and irresistible. Some things are just too wretched to bear alone.
I don’t begrudge Rebecca Black for this. She’s, what, an 8th grader? Didn’t we all dream about being famous at that age? My vitriol is reserved entirely for the Ark Music Factory. They’re the ones who wrote and produced this mess and will do it for anyone whose parents are willing to drop $2K. Sadly, this type of thing is the basis for their entire business model, so there will plenty more where this came from.
Yeah, I heard there’s going to be a bunch of them.
I think I heard that, anyway.
What’s very interesting is that Ark Music Factory co-founder, Patrice Wilson, is the guy who does the rap in Friday. He’ll tell people who want to employ AMF’s services to get famous that they’re in it for the wrong reasons (uhm, exactly what other reason would there be? If you didn’t want some sort of notoriety you wouldn’t be actively putting yourself out there like that), but then puts himself in the video. What’cha doin’ in there, Patrice? I thought this was supposed to be about the young’uns?
“Everyone knows if you didn’t call ‘shotgun’ you sit bitch.”
I just laughed out loud at my desk.
I slave to please you, Ms. Sloan. :)
Working in the record store for as long as I did there was a saying I would say to people who were trying to excuse their choices at any given time.
Bascially I’d say, we’ve all got stuff we dance in front of the mirror to and there is no point in fronting like we don’t!
I’ve never heard the original but I have seen the Colbert/Fallon/white haired guy version and I love it.
Mike, I agree. THAT version, with Colbert, The Roots, Fallon, and Taylor Hicks, I will openly admit: I dig it. They made an F minus lyrical crap sandwich into something silly, yet wonderful. I would dance to it in front of a mirror.
But the original, with it’s monotonous droning of spread “Fryeedayee” vowels and unexciting, uninteresting composition, NO. No, no, no, no, no. If I listened to that in front of a mirror I’d likely get all Black Swan on my ass (read: break the mirror and stab myself with a choice shard).
Now I will grant that I had not heard the song until the uber-Colbert version and I plan on never hearing the original.
Ahh Black Swan. My wife watched it the other evening (after I passed out at 8pm) and said it reminded her of Chucky. Chucky. I thought that was great!