In Defense of Rebecca Black: A Victim of the Age of Auto-Tune

    

            It’s been about a week, and by now, most are aware of the ear-wrenching song, “Friday” by tween Rebecca Black.  Its redundant and lame lyrics, auto-tune overkill, and infomercial-level acting in the music video render it unworthy of any merit whatsoever. Despite the overwhelmingly negative public reaction, Ms. Black told Good Morning America that it’s “an accomplishment” and the whole point of the song is to be “catchy”.

The public loves to hate Rebecca Black, but maybe she is just a victim of the pop music industry, which almost exclusively pumps out formulaic, catchy songs with meaningless lyrics. The gap between Rebecca Black and the current hit song on the radio is closing fast, especially since Ms. Black has beaten her idol, Justin Bieber, on the iTunes top 100 list and received over 29 million hits on her music video. This ‘Age of Auto-tune and Lip-Syncing’ is churning out a generation of make-it-big pop stars, in which most are neither the “worst singer[s]” nor the “best singer[s]”. Antoine Dodson, the preceding Youtube sensation, profited heavily from his fifteen-second stardom when skilled auto-tuners composed a song out of his idiotic comments. Before hating on Ms. Black, consider this: perhaps Rebecca Black is simply the latest to have been sucked into the pop industry’s treacherous siren song – an innocent youth who really enjoyed Friday and wanted to share her enthusiasm with the world (albeit rather badly). Let's just pass her by and look for someone who can actually sing.

Update: Horror upon horrors! Black has announced that she is releasing A WHOLE ALBUM in December 2012! Run for the hills! The apocalypse is upon us!

—Ashley Park