Rebecca Black
By Juka Kim
Friday
Rebecca Black was an ordinary teenager before she uploaded a single video on YouTube that changed her whole entire life. The 13-year old honor student who loves to hang out with her friends and everything else a typical girl at her age would enjoy started singing and dancing when she was only three years old. She began taking piano lessons at age seven and vocal lessons when she was nine. Black performed at many patriotic events, including Republic Women’s Convention, Rotary International Convention, and the national anthem at Angels Stadium.
Black wanted to go out in the real world and pursue her dream as a musician. Being too young to try out for “American Idol” and many other auditions, she found her self introduced to Ark Music Factory, which her friend, Alana, had just done a music video with. Her veterinary parents immediately supported her desire to work with the Ark Music Factory.
However, her Friday upload was not all cheerful and blissful. Instead, it had a more negative outcome than positive. A lot of times, she was cyber bullied by people she didn’t even know and critiqued by many who lived outside of the country, even as far away as Japan.
Finally, Black and her parents met with the Ark Music Factory producers in the fall on 2010. She sang many songs for Ark, including solo songs she had just gotten in her school production of “Memphis” as well as “Steal Your Rock and Roll.” Ark offered three options for Rebecca for the upcoming production of the music video. Her parents chose to pay $4000 to receive all of the rights of the production of their daughter.
Black first received a song about “adult love,” as she describes. Ark then sent “Friday,” which Black became very fond of and immediately decided to produce. On February 10, 2011, she uploaded the video on Youtube for her family and her close acquaintances to see. However, after 63 days, her video broke the YouTube 100 million marker, outperforming Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” which took 67 days to reach 100 million. It was taken down when it
accumulated 144 million streams, but it was later re-uploaded, adding another 52 million views.
The interview reveals that the song, Friday, had received a label as the “worst song ever.” Black herself has been presented with brutal comments like “I hope you cut yourself and I hope you get a eating disorder and die.” She admits that at first, the comments made her cry and she blamed herself about the failure of the song. Black was very angry and showed great hatred toward her critics on her twitter page; however, she turned this pure hatred into passion, which lead her to success.