Summary
- Rebecca Black's viral hit "Friday" was created on a whim.
- The intense backlash and trolling that followed the release of "Friday" took a toll on Rebecca's mental health.
- Rebecca Black has found some solace and acceptance with the passage of time.
Few grasp the harsh realities of instantaneous fame quite like singer-songwriter Rebecca Black. The now 26-year-old first dipped her toes into the music industry back in 2011, when she released her now-infamous debut music video, ‘Friday.’
Debuting in an era where YouTube viral sensations were still a dime a dozen, ‘Friday’ went on to become one of the biggest viral sensations of the 2000s, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Then just 13, Rebecca found herself suddenly thrust into the spotlight, not for acclaim, but as the target of ruthless criticism and endless mockery.
Years later, ‘Friday’ has long outlived its time on the spotlight, but does Black still contend with the kind of relentless trolling that followed the song’s debut?
How Did Rebecca Black Come Up With Her Infamous Debut Single, Friday?
When 13-year-old Rebecca Black released her debut music video, 'Friday,' on YouTube, she had no inkling it would turn into one of the biggest viral sensations of the 2000s. In fact, there was scant reason to anticipate any kind of attention, as she’d more or less made the video on a whim, inspired by one of her classmates.
Hoping to also experience the thrill of making her very own music video, Rebecca convinced her mom to call Ark Music Factory’s Patrice Wilson, who, for the not-so-measly sum of $4000, agreed to take charge of writing, producing, snapping photos, and shooting the video.
The song's innocuous lyrics, which would later become the epicenter of the intense trolling that followed its debut, were crafted with the kind of light-hearted spontaneity that comes to a man running a record label that primarily caters to amateurish teen musicians.
“So it’s about 1 a.m., and I decided I’m going to call it a night, but I’m like, wait a second, then just one more time,” Wilson told Slate of how he came up with the lyrics to ‘Friday.’ “So I play a beat and I make up a song, ‘Friday, Friday.’ And I’m like, well, because it is Friday.”
Though stripped down to a mind-numbing extent, Black didn’t flinch when Wilson eventually handed her the lyrics to 'Friday.' “This works, this is true,” she told Slate of her initial reaction to the lyrics. “I like to hang out with my friends on the weekends, and I go to school. I really didn’t think that much about it because, again, like, nobody’s going to see it.”
Rebecca Black Suffered Intense Backlash After Friday Went Viral
Rather than fade into obscurity, ‘Friday’ went on to become one of the biggest viral sensations of the 2000s. Just three months after it dropped on YouTube, the video had been viewed a staggering 167 million times. But the viewers weren’t flooding in to laud Black’s musical talents or pay tribute to the video’s artistic merits.
As was made abundantly clear by the millions of scathing remarks that inundated the video's comment section and the thousands of viral memes and parodies that proliferated across social media platforms, the entire internet had united to mock Rebecca.
“One minute, I was a normal girl and then, in the next, millions of people know who I was and they were ruthless in hurling the most vile words my way,” Rebecca would later recall in a poignant essay for NBC News. “People were writing things all over the internet, on social media and they were laughing at me on TV shows, and making fun of me in YouTube videos. “
Despite the intense backlash, Rebecca balked at the idea of taking the video down. “God knows why, but I said no,” she shared with Slate in 2020. “And I think something told me, ‘Ugh, if you [take the video down], then everybody else wins, and you’ve just immediately given up any sort of little bit of power you had.’”
With the video's popularity soaring, Black also got to experience a few of the perks that come with instantaneous fame. “There were some breaks in the clouds: I went on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno; I ended up on red carpets; I got to meet and work with Katy Perry who, in the midst of so much hate directed at me was nice to me in a totally non-ironic way,” she wrote in her essay for NBC News. “It didn’t make up for the abuse I was experiencing, but between that and the adults who tried to protect me, maybe it did help mitigate some of the worst of the pain and fear.”
Is Rebecca Black Still Getting Trolled For Friday?
However, none of the perks of fame could halt the onslaught of negative attention. In the years that followed 'Friday's' debut, Black had to contend with being the target of constant online ridicule and trolling, a situation that gradually took a toll on her mental health.
“I just remember this overwhelming feeling of just suck it up, smile, stay strong. Nobody can know that you’re hurting—just laugh with them,” she shared in her essay for NBC News. “And as soon as I started doing that, people saw me as kind of in on it, and that at least felt better than feeling like the butt of a joke. All of the actual pain and embarrassment and shame that came with all of that just kind of got swept under the rug for a good few years.”
When her fifteen minutes of fame finally lapsed, Rebecca retreated from the spotlight, still quietly reeling from the controversy generated by 'Friday.' The teen viral sensation would re-emerge nearly a decade later, at a time when nostalgia had gradually eroded much of the negative sentiment surrounding the video.
“The amount of people that ask me [to] record a video of that song because they play it in their office every Friday, very unironically, is amazing to me,” she told Slate in 2020.
The now 26-year-old even found the courage to continue performing the song, albeit with some slight alterations. “There’s no buzzy auto-tune or anything on it. It’s much more of a ’90s-meets–Courtney Love or Lana Del Rey thing,” she told Slate of the refined version of the song in 2020.
