Rebecca Renee Black (born June 21, 1997) is a female pop singer and YouTuber who gained notoriety memetic status for her single "Friday", which she released in 2011 while still a teenager.
She got her start after working with Los Angeles record label ARK Music Factory, which writes and produces music for clients for a multi-thousand dollar fee; the label wrote the song "Friday" as well as produced the music video. The song became a huge, if highly controversial, viral hit, becoming the number 1 video on YouTube in 2011. She and her mother eventually sued ARK over the copyright to the song and the video has since moved to her own YouTube channel. She has since continued to release new music, generally under her indie label RB Records. She released her debut EP RE/BL in 2017, and is set to release her debut album, Let Her Burn, in 2023.
In 2012, she signed with the Maker Studios YouTube network. In addition to promoting her music and covers of other artists, her channel features blogs and question-and-answer videos. Her channel has over 1.5 million subscribers as of 2022.
Discography
- RE/BL (EP, 2017)
- Rebecca Black Was Here (EP, 2021)
- Let Her Burn (album, 2023)
Rebecca Black provides examples of:
- Artistic License – Music: In "My Moment", there are a bass player and guitarist visible. Neither instrument is heard in the song.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: Rebecca Black has made numerous videos making fun of "Friday" and seems to be trying to make up for her participation in it.
- Then again, she put it back on her YouTube channel. On a Friday.
- The Cameo: In Katy Perry's Last Friday Night As Herself in a brown wig.
- Continuity Nod: Her song Saturday
is full of references to her previous singles (mostly Friday and Sing It). - Deadpan Snarker: How she gets by when it comes to all the mockery and internet infamy.
- Hidden Depths: Her reasons for recording an acoustic version of "Friday".
- Hyperpop: Much of her later work, including a remix of "Friday" released in 2022 for its tenth anniversary. Falls into
Fridge Brilliance given "Friday" is often cited as an influence on the genre. - Little Miss Snarker: Girl's got a quick wit, as seen in her behind the scene videos.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Averted in Friday. Even though it's a pop song, the lyrics don't rhyme at all, unusually enough.
- Self-Deprecation:
- The rap remix was actually created by Ark Music Group themselves!
- Rebecca herself made fun of her song in a series of videos for Friday Or Die as part of their "Black Friday'' April Fools gag.
- Her video "Saturday" made numerous jokes about "Friday".
- Rebecca Black watches "Friday".
- The rap remix
- Shout-Out: The Saturday video features a party scene with a girl that looks similar to Miley Cyrus twerking in front of David Dayes.
- Stealth Parody: "Prom Night", an autotuned, low-production-valued song with similarly repetitive lyrics and similar ill-fitting rap, was passed off as a Rebecca Black song for a while.
- Take That!:
- Her song My Moment.
- From Epic Fail by Mark O'Connell:Black donated a significant portion of her earnings from iTunes downloads of the song to victims of the Japanese tsunami, an actual terrible thing (as opposed to a “worst thing ever”) that occurred on the exact same day she went viral. She may or may not have done so, or been advised to do so, in order to make herself look like a much better person than any of the jeering hordes that were then closing in on her. Either way, it worked.
- Her song My Moment
- Took a Level in Badass: Rebecca grew from a victim of bullying because of her meme status to a legitimately talented hyperpop musician with a great voice and catchy hooks.
- Turn the Other Cheek: Rebecca and her friend (the girl in pink) seem to be really classy about being the laughingstock of the Internet. She and her friend have been taking the comments in stride and seem to be really level-headed."I decided not to give the haters the satisfaction that they got me so bad I gave up."—Rebecca Black, on turning down ARK's offering to take her video down.
- Underage Casting: She was just fourteen, but the song "Friday" implies that she and her friends are of driving age. Lampshaded by Black herself — see Who Writes This Crap?!.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: In one video, Rebecca Black pokes fun at the fact that there is a 13-year-old driving a car in the "Friday" music video.
- Several other parodies have touched upon this too, usually resulting in Black's car crashing violently or being driven off a cliff. See "Brock's Dub", the most popular of these.
- DEATH BATTLE! had some fun with this in her battle against Justin Bieber. The thirteen-year-old driving the car had no clue what to do and ended up running into a wall while also running over Bieber, too.
- Several other parodies have touched upon this too, usually resulting in Black's car crashing violently or being driven off a cliff. See "Brock's Dub"
