Rebecca Black Just Killed Pop Music
By Josh Liburdi
In case you haven’t seen this video from up-and-coming pop artist Rebecca Black, take a moment to watch. This is the end of pop music as we currently know it. Remember when the boy band craze hit its apex around 2000, suddenly no one gave a shit, and it turned into self-parody? Well, here’s the beginning of the end of this era of pop music. This song exposes the inane and overused hallmarks of current pop so effectively that I don’t know if I should laugh or celebrate.
Thanks to Rebecca and her production team, we’ve turned a corner and there is no going back. It took me two full viewings before I figured out that this wasn’t a joke. (Parts that stumped me: when the rapper suddenly appears, when she says “gotta have my bowl”). Now when I hear the latest electro-pop song on the radio, all I’m gonna think is “we we we so excited.” I just hope that at some point in the not too distant future, someone at Ark Music Factory looks back at this and says, “wow, we really fucked up. I mean, I am so sorry.”
We might still have a couple more years of auto-tune and crotch shots, but after this, none of it matters. Goodbye Katy, Ke$ha, Miley–I’ll miss your boobs, slutcore moves and so-bad-it’s-good music (“Party in the USA” was a total banger).
Editor’s Note: The mystery behind Rebecca Black was recently uncovered. She is a real person and the video is not a joke. BlackBook, in a post from this morning, uncovered a story on Black originally posted on City Sound Inertia. Ark Music Factory, the people behind the video, is a LA-based company ran by Patrice Wilson and Clarence Jay. They cater to wealthy parents with adolescent daughters (aged 13 to 17) who want to be pop stars. In their casting calls, they seek out young talent with no original material and produce auto-tuned music along with an accompanying video. Many of their videos (see City Sound Inertia for examples) are as laughably bad as Black’s, but not nearly as popular.