There are a number of schools of philosophy for which becoming like this is the worst thing that can happen to you. They aren’t very fun schools of philosophy.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the hot new viral hit, “Friday,” written by Clarence Jay and Patrice Wilson of the ARK Music Factory, and performed by 13-year old singer Rebecca Black, with the recording and video production mostly paid for by her parents.
Perhaps you’ve seen it roundly criticized as “the worst song ever” (it isn’t), or heard a bunch of bad things about it on the Twitters or somesuch.
Perhaps you’ve watched the video (which was homing in on 28 million YouTube hits at press time):
Perhaps you’ve watched parody videos remixed with other compelling viral video content on YouTube:
But have you stopped to think about what it means? What it says about days of the week, cereal, riding in cars and the lenses that shape the way youth looks at the world and the world looks at youth?
Come on, let’s go. No time to rest. Rebecca Black isn’t Walter Sobchak – she rolls on Shabbos —
Worst Ever?
First of all, “Friday” isn’t the worst song ever. Yeah, it’s got a lot of mistakes in it and has huge gaps in its syntactic content. The guys who wrote it seemed to have been trying to make the girl feel like a star by making her song resemble popular songs while omitting anything objectionable, with the result that it says very close to nothing. The autotune is used poorly. It’s inane. But it’s relatively catchy, and I can identify with liking Friday. As a day of the week, it’s okay. Pretty good day of the week.
At times like this, it’s useful to have your own “worst song ever” to call on and remind people that this is not as bad as it gets. For the last 12 years or so, my go-to “worst song ever” has been “If I Was Your Mother” by Bon Jovi, off 1993’s Keep the Faith album:
By certain standards, yeah, this isn’t the worst song ever, but it always creeped me out so much that I had to skip it every time I listened to the Keep the Faith album in the late 90s and early aughts. Which was frequently. Such a creepy song!
But yeah, “If I Was Your Mother” makes me feel squicky, awful and gross. “Friday” is, at worst, incompetent, exploitative and stupid. What is your “worst song ever?” Leave a note in the comments!
Because You Didn’t Know What I Was Going to Use the Bowl For
Skipping past the unfortunate “yeah yeahs” at the beginning, let’s break this song down:
7am, waking up in the morning
Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs
The first two lines deliberately recall “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha, except we establish Rebecca Black is much cleaner-cut than Ke$ha is. Ke$ha starts with that energy that only becomes debaucherous after the fact. There’s nothing off-color or demonstrative about “feeling like P. Diddy” or grabbing her glasses and going to “hit the city.” It’s only when she starts brushing her teeth that things get raunchy. So, Ke$ha starts out a little neutral and veers toward Ke$hatown.
Conversely, Rebecca Black’s song is straight-down-the-middle wholesome and then intensifies. This girl is waking up quite early, and knows she has to be fresh for her day. She has a routine that is not quite so familiar to her that she can get by without reminding herself of it (because she is only 13), and she is cheerfully determined to follow that routine.
This is the biggest defining characteristic of “Friday” – the speaker of the song isn’t a party girl – she’s a nice 13 year old girl who follows rules and acts appropriately. She is singing in a genre that runs out of things to talk about if booties and drugs aren’t mentioned so kudos to the song for not going there. Unfortunately, it holds her back – since this sort of dance-driven electronically influenced hip-hop is so bound up in talking about luxury and clubs and hedonism, Rebecca is left talking about only a few things and repeating herself a lot to fill dead air. What Black says about the song is particularly apt, which was pre-written for her as part of her sort of vanity project thing and was presented to her along with an alternative song:
I didn’t write it at all…The other song was about adult love–I haven’t experienced that yet. ‘Friday’ is about hanging out with friends, having fun. I felt like it was my personality in that song.
-Rebecca Black
Next, we get some insight into the life that the songwriters presumably think she leads, as an upstanding teenager.
Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal
This is very smart. Do this in order. You need to get the bowl before you get the cereal, or you end up pouring the cereal on the table.
Seriously, though, this is the first moment after the initial “yeahs” where I knew the song was just terrible (and then I let it go). Mentioning she has to have her bowl is interesting – there’s a tension it sets up momentarily, because we don’t know what kind of bowl it is, what might go into it, or why it is important – but that momentary suspense is dashed with a satisfying, mundane answer.
But the more I listen to the song, the more this line grows on me, especially the way Black sings the word “cereal.” It has a touching familiarity. Past a certain age, the word “cereal” stops being in a person’s vocabulary the same way it is in youth – as something that is ascribed to you by authorities that care for you as both a responsibility (you have to eat your cereal!) and something that will feed you and fuel you and be good for you to eat. Adults don’t have “cereal” the way Rebecca Black has “cereal.” Adults have “breakfast” – a term that implies previous self-denial and personal ownership of the meal.
Seein’ everything, the time is goin’
Tickin’ on and on, everybody’s rushin’
This pair of lines makes it sound as if the song is going to get soulful or human for a second, but then it gets … cute. In most songs, the idea that “the time is goin, / Tickin’ on and on” would be a wistful, sad observation. But in this song, to the kid in question, the consequences of the inexorable march of time are not the loss of everything you ever knew or loved, but being late to school!
Gotta get down to the bus stop
Gotta catch my bus, I see my friends
So, this is the most important moment in the song, even it gets lost a bit by showing up so abruptly. I’ve had this moment personally, and it’s one of the more uplifting experiences one can have as a straight-and-narrow young teenager.
Black (or the speaker of the song, whichever), expects to take the bus. She is driven by an urgency she submits to, but isn’t crazy about. Very little about her day is in her own control, when all of a sudden, her friends pull up in a car.
Cars are hugely symbolic for teenagers, obviously – even more than they are for G-Unit alums rolling on rims bigger than Outback steakhouse tables. But to teenagers, cars mean freedom – not necessarily freedom from things they don’t want to do, but freedom in the sense of active agency and control over where they go and what they do, which, it turns out, is more thrilling and important than going anywhere specific.
When I was a teenager and surprisingly got to ride in or drive in a car, did I really ever go anywhere interesting? Usually it was just to a diner or a field to play Frisbee or somebody’s house. Maybe I went to Tower Records. The important thing was that I or my friends had the agency over where we were going.
Since Black is only 13, we have to conclude that either:
- Her friends are older than she is
- California has some pretty crazy drivers license laws
- The people who wrote the song have no idea when teenagers get drivers licenses
- The people who wrote the song wrote it for somebody older
- This whole scene is a fantasy of a Friday that never really happens, and instead Rebecca Black is trapped in a simulation of a dream-state by robots trying to use her for energy and implant ideas in her brain that will lead to her making business decisions down the road that are beneficial to their shareholders
All of these readings are, I think, fine.
Kickin’ in the front seat
Sittin’ in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?
And here is the most baffling part of the song, but also a kind of touching one. To think of a life where this was the kind of choice you ever had to make! This choice between sitting in the front seat versus sitting in the back seat is going to take up more room in the song than anything other than the day of the week, the abstract concept of partying, or the word “fun.”
It is another power dynamic at work – Black’s character looking for liberation, but almost a Miltonic liberation, where she has found obedience to be hardly an inconvenience, but she wonders what it might be like to be responsible for herself.
After all, for adults, there is pretty clear sitting etiquette in cars. If the front passenger seat is open, sit there. If not, sit in the back.
But for teenagers, there’s the possibility that the social relationships in the cars are so fluid that where you sit in a car is going to matter, plus the possibility that the laws that specify the number of people who sit in the front and back seats of cars will be blissfully ignored.
And for children (which, let’s not forget, 13 year olds pretty much are), there’s the possibility that a rider may be too young to sit in the front seat, because the diagonal belt across the chest may choke the child around the neck, or that the car has a baby seat in it that restricts sitting in the back – or there is an adult to whom the child must defer, precluding her from sitting in the back.
So, it makes sense that this would be more of a loaded choice for Black’s character than it would be to an adult. I’m not sure it would be stated without any further elaboration, but it’s also possible she would be self-conscious talking about it or not entirely know why it feels so liberating to get to sit wherever she wants in the car.
The “I see my friends” that preceded this was so joyful – this is a space where they won’t judge her for it. The “kickin’ it in the front seat” and “sittin’ in the back seat” are there so the parents know the production company are real hip-hop moguls who know all the up-to-date street slang and are worth their $2,000.
And also because, to the degree that this is a hip hop fantasy, it makes sense to use language that recalls hip hop songs, even if we won’t have too many opportunities to do that given the subject matter.
It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend
I love how in this song, Rebecca Black isn’t excited about it being Friday night, she’s excited about it being Friday morning. All the people at school or work are feeling that little bit better because after they get through this day, they can have some nonspecific fun!
I would be remiss to go any farther without nodding to this song’s true cultural predecessor, Loverboy’s “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend,” which, like “Friday,” ascribes a romantic, almost spiritual significance to this part of the week. It’s a tribute to how much rituals become ingrained in how people think about the world around them:
Just for the juxtaposition, take a look back a “Tik Tok” to hear the song’s other predecessor. You can see the fun little niche Black’s ballad has carved out between the two:
It’s notable that Rebecca Black’s song has more than half of the total views of Ke$ha’s song. Which is kind of absurd.
Friday, Friday
Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend
I’m just going to put this here, because we all need to be educated:
Friday is the day between Thursday and Saturday, and is the last day of the school or work week in many countries. In countries adopting Monday-first conventions as recommended by the international standard ISO 8601, it is the fifth day of the week. It is the sixth day in countries that adopt a Sunday-first convention as in Abrahamic tradition. (See “Week-day names” for more on the different conventions.)
In most countries with a five-day work week, Friday is the last workday before the weekend and is, therefore, viewed as a cause for celebration or relief (leading to the phrase “TGIF”, for “Thank God It’s Friday”). In recent years, in some offices, employees are allowed to wear less formal attire on Fridays, known as Casual Friday or Dress-Down Friday.
In Saudi Arabia and Iran, however, Friday is the last day of the weekend and Saturday is the first workday. In Iran, it is the only weekend day. Moreover, in some countries, Friday is the first day of the weekend, and Sunday is the first workday. In Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) and Kuwait, Friday was formerly the last day of the weekend while Saturday was the first workday. However, this was changed in Bahrain and the U.A.E. on 1 September 2006 to Friday as the first day of the weekend and Sunday as the beginning of the workday, with Kuwait following on 1 September 2007.
The name Friday comes from the Old English Frīġedæġ, meaning the “day of Frige”. The same holds for Frīatag in Old High German, Freitag in Modern German and Vrijdag in Dutch.
The expected cognate name in Old Norse would be *friggjar-dagr. However, the name of Friday in Old Norse is frjá-dagr instead, indicating a loan of the weekday names from Low German. The modern Scandinavian form is Fredag in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.”
—Courtesy of Wikipedia
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekend
It’s wild that this song doesn’t describe any of the things they actually do on Friday for fun, but just says “fun fun fun fun.” It’s as if the lyrics were written in pencil on a piece of looseleaf paper, and the third line of this verse is “LIST FUN HERE, FUN FUN FUN ETC.”
Also note that the fun, fun, fun, fun precedes “Lookin’ forward to the weekend,” creating a literary ambiguity in the sequence of events – we are simultaneously having fun on Friday morning thinking about what will happen later and foreshadowing the fun things that will actually happen, which we will never talk about.
But isn’t that the way with kids, sometimes? You don’t necessarily need a lot to do to be excited about “fun, fun, fun, fun.” Just the idea of an environment that empowers you into having it is exciting enough.
7:45, we’re drivin’ on the highway
Cruisin’ so fast, I want time to fly
We’ve made good time, considering we only woke up at 7 a.m., and more irony with the young person oblivious to the sad side of rushing through things.
Fun, fun, think about fun
You know what it is
Do I, Rebecca Black? Do I? Is this an allusion to these kids making out or something? Inappropriate!
I got this, you got this
My friend is by my right
I got this, you got this
Now you know it
This verse feels out of place, but I think it amounts to more genre-service posturing. Remember that one of the big reasons this self-funded publishing happens is to make the performer and her family feel like she is a star. Even if the song goes positively nowhere (as one must imagine most of these do), there need to be moments that set up the connection – conjure the Platonic form, if you will – that the kid is in fact a music star. This is one of those big moments, an imitation of other songs rather than something that fits in this song at the moment.
It’s also more than a little bit awkward that she gestures to her friend at her right and mentions it is her friend “by my right,” and then it looks as if she is going to gesture at the girl on her left and say she is also her friend, but she chooses not to for whatever reason.
Sorry, I am not quite creepy enough a human being to determine via Internet research whether these kids are Rebecca Black’s real-life friends. It could go either way.
Kickin’ in the front seat
Sittin’ in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?
We return to this moment, which I suppose has been suspended in time, or being recalled as the moment of liberation when this day took on its greater meaning.
It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, FridayGettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekendPartyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekend
I once wrote an absolutely terrible paper for an undergraduate English course about the Renaissance English poet Edmund Spenser. I had not done the reading in a timely manner and was rushing through it. Spenser uses a grand verse style of elaborate rhymes and formal repetition, so rushing through it is pretty forced and unpleasant. I ended up writing the paper about how I found Spender repetitive and uninteresting, and how the “girth” of his work created “the illusion of deeper meaning.” I was incorrect and rightfully received a terrible grade.
I will not make the same mistake twice. This part is just repeating the chorus. It doesn’t mean anything special, good or bad, it’s just filler, and I’m not going to get obsessed with it, even if it taunts your dreams after you watch the video two dozen times.
Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday
Today i-is Friday, Friday (Partyin’)
We-we-we so excited
We so excited
We gonna have a ball today
It is cool here to talk about the other days. In the rest of the song structure, we’ve been talking about Friday, but now that it’s the bridge and we need a change of pace, we will talk about the other days.
Tomorrow is Saturday
And Sunday comes after…wards
Okay, wow. Perhaps we don’t want to burden ourselves down with the obligation to say something.
But yeah, this line really needed to rhyme. This is, I think, where most people start feeling confident that they can just bash this song in public and nobody will ever look down at them for it.
Still, lest we forget, I am a huge fan of songs that name days of the week.
I don’t want this weekend to end
You and me both, kid. You and me both.
[Rap Verse]
Alright, so this is the part of the song that throws people the most. It’s just totally inappropriate – the rapper is uncomfortably older than the 13-year-old girl (and you don’t have to be nearly this much older to be uncomfortably older than a 13-year-old girl.).
Who is this guy? Turns out it is one of the guys who wrote the song, ARK Music Factory producer Patrice “Pato” Williams, who apparently was born in South Africa and toured as a rap artist in Central and Eastern Europe.
R-B, Rebecca Black
So chillin’ in the front seat
In the back seat
We go back to the front seat / back seat question, but there’s no reason for this rapper to know about it. Perhaps it is like typological interpretation of the Old and New Testaments, where events repeat because of some sort of divine, spiritual or cosmic echo – an event like Rebecca Black deciding whether to get in the front of back seat affects people on the same cities highway system, whether they were present for it or not, and they find themselves repeating her decision-making. Maybe.
I’m drivin’, cruisin’
Fast lanes, switchin’ lanes
Wit’ a car up on my side
Pato apparently has the luxury of adding the inane details about cars and stuff that have been missing from the rest of the song because Rebecca Black doesn’t have a driver’s license.
Seriously, though, he might as well be wearing a T-shirt that says “I AM A REAL LIFE ADULT RAPPER HERE TO VALIDATE YOUR PERFORMANCE.” It’s an obvious formal move, which sometimes works, but usually doesn’t, especially with very young girls.
Here’s an example of where it works (The Pussycat Dolls’ “Buttons,” featuring Snoop Dogg, which is still kind of uncomfortable, but is that way on purpose. It is also of dubious work safety):
And here’s an example of where it works less well (Dream “This is Me,” featuring Puff Daddy and some guy named Kain):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qinacew2O4A
Now, just to be fair to Dream, whom I tended to like during their 15 minutes of fame, and who have been trying to get back into the game with the new group Lady Phoenix, this is the original song, not involving an uncomfortably older rapper or forced hip hop style, which is much better (but apparently is harder to find online and trickier to embed successfully, sorry about that):
Passin’ by is a school bus in front of me
Makes tick tock, tick tock, wanna scream
These are probably the worst lines of the song and its biggest claim to “worst song ever” status, just because it makes it seem as if the sketchy older man is following a school bus for uncomfortable reasons. But, we know Rebecca Black isn’t on the school bus – she is in her car with her friends. So it seems especially out of place and strange.
The “tick tock, tick tock” may be a throwaway reference to the song’s nods to Ke$ha, but I also think it might reflect how much angstier the older man is about the passage of time than the young teenager – you’ll see he is affirmed by the realization it is Friday, and whatever it was he was going to do that was so bad is probably going to be replaced by going to a game night or something.
Check my time, it’s Friday, it’s a weekend
We gonna have fun, c’mon, c’mon, y’all
And there it is.
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 weekendPartyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekendIt’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 weekendPartyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin’ forward to the weekend
And then we repeat the chorus a bunch more times, unchanged by everything that just happened with the creepy older dude. He was definitely just spliced in for genre-validating effect.
The party we see at the end is a social validation for Rebecca Black – she shows up at a house party we never see inside. We never see if it is appropriate for her age, but more importantly, we see her friends outside happy to see her, we see her dressed up like a star, we see this big love bomb on her outside this party, which is another big part of what her family was paying for when they got this song.
Conclusion
“Friday” is sloppy, but it still has a message, which is about teenagers excited at the prospect of being in charge of themselves in a way that feels natural and isn’t too much trouble. It’s pretty sweet, and means that more people probably actually like this song than let on.
How about you? Do you like it, or would you like to let the hate flow? It’s quite popular online these days. Sound off in the comments!