In defence of Rebecca Black. Sort of.

Inspired by this column and a touch of jet lag, I have been pondering the big issues. Like, just how bad is Rebecca Black?

You all know the story. Rivalled only by Suri Cruise for parentally-sponsored age-inappropriate activity, 13 year old Rebecca Black recently recorded her "song", 'Friday', which - largely due to its car-wreck awfulness - suddenly netted over 61 million views on YouTube. And there's no escaping the fact that it's terrible, right? Insipid "lyrics" so bad that they surely must be a joke, a nasal whine devoid of any actual musical talent, and so on. Ok, we get the picture: this is another simpering indulging of a spoilt teen who'll trade on her averagely good looks and Mommy and Daddy's purse for a while, before maybe having some drug problems and then slipping back into obscurity where she belongs. Right?

Maybe. The part of this that gives me some cause for optimism is Black's donation of the proceeds from this abomination of a song to the Japanese tsunami relief fund. It would be easy to accuse any 13 year old whose parents had the spare cash to let their talentless child record a song (money arguably better spent on some singing lessons, for example) - of being spoilt. But I think this gesture of donation illustrates an awareness deeper than one of self-centrism, and I like that. (Then again, perhaps it was just a marketing ploy to make me despise her less. I just don't know anymore.) I also like that some of her little cronies (are they in the front seat or the back seat? It's such a tough choice) are pretty normal looking kids - my favourite is the girl with braces. Rock on.

So there's no denying the song is rubbish and entitled, but there are positive elements to it.  Moreover, while this song is an abomination, who is to blame for that? And who is to blame for its success? Black herself for having the temerity to pen such an awful number? (Did she even write it? I don't know. Heaven help whoever came up with those lyrics if it wasn't a 13 year old girl.) Her parents for instilling such a misguided sense of arrogance in her (did no one realise she had no talent, or did ambition just lead them to blindly overlook this?) or more importantly, for funding this nightmare in the first place? What role does the commercial music industry play in this? Certainly there's any amount of terrible music released on a daily basis, and yet as listeners we drive that. I consider myself a relatively discerning consumer of music, yet I've watched Black's video twice (once in a darkened Wellington bar, and once on YouTube before writing this). So I'm still part of a demand that, as long as it exists, one horrible "artist" or another will fulfill. Is there money to be made in deliberately writing Car-Wreck Songs, so awful that you just can't look away? Indeed so awful that we feel the need to look 61 million times and, despite our horror, inadvertently make it a "success"? And if so, who are we, the consumers, the demandeurs, to get furious about this rubbish music assaulting us? We created this.

Which leads me to my next rant - the commentary. I couldn't agree more with The Guardian that if the best you can come up with is "OMFG b*tch you suck" then, well.... you suck. I am increasingly depressed by mindless public commentary on any number of issues - Libya ("what's so bad about that Garfy [sic] guy anyway?" ... an actual comment by a radio host recently), politics, and yes, pop culture. Are we so inarticulate that all we can do is call a video "gay", and a musically-inept teenager a "whore"? And if we are the ones mindlessly consuming this vapid material, then really, who are we to criticise? We become guilty of the very thing we accuse Black of: mindless, banal, simplistic "commentary" on mindless, banal, simplistic "music". I say it again: We. created. this.

Sadly, I think "Friday" could be something of a milestone in our consumption of pop culture. I can think of any number of struggling, yet exquisitely clever musicians out there who won't make 61 million views over their entire career. They will not experience "success" like a talentless 13 year old has, and that saddens me. But "success" comes in different shapes and sizes and ages, and there is also "success" in holding on to musical integrity and maturity, and a belief in what you create. It goes without saying that I admire that much more than I admire 61 million YouTube views.

In the end, we are to blame for 'Friday' being part of our world. And if it hadn't been Rebecca Black and 'Friday', someone else would have come along with 'Thursday' - something equally dire and yet equally "successful". And sadly, it's only a matter of time until our endless, insatiable need for easily-consumed idiocy leads someone - Rebecca Black, or some other aspiring nobody - to lead us to 'Saturday'. I mean c'mon, the lyrical options are endless: we could go to the mall, text our friends, trawl the internet for the next teen sensation to bag...

My short point is this: like it or not, we created Rebecca Black so until we're prepared to look away from the disaster, we're no better than her. And that's a scary thought.