It’s quite hard to believe but 2020 marks the nine-year anniversary since Rebecca Black burst onto the scene with ‘Friday’ and reminded everyone what the days of the week were. Just a mere mention of ‘Friday’ is enough to get that annoyingly catchy hook and the excessive use of autotune stuck in your head again.
Just in case you needed a reminder:
The much-maligned single has since entered the annals of pop-culture as one of the worst things to ever hit airwaves and is a relic of pop music from the early 2010s.
But for all the critical reappraisal (well, by fans anyway) the song has received in the years since its release, it seems like Rebecca Black hasn’t forgotten all the crap she copped for releasing the song.
Speaking of remembering, the GOAT team talk about Luke Perry and how the Oscars forgot about him on It’s Been A Big Day For… below:
The singer-turned-YouTuber took to her social media on the eve of ‘Friday’s’ nine-year anniversary and shared a still from the music video alongside a photo of her today (A/N – she is almost unrecognisable). But more eye-catching than the change from 13-year-old Rebecca Black to 22-year-old Rebecca Black is her thoughts about all the awful stuff she went through after ‘Friday.’
She writes how she wishes she could just “go back” and talk to her 13-year-old self “who was terribly ashamed of herself and afraid of the world,” to her “15-year-old self who felt like she had nobody to talk to about the depression,” to her “17-year-old-self who had almost every producer/songwriter tell [her] they’d never work with [her].”
But for all the undeserved crap Rebecca received, it seems like she’s come out of it stronger as she ends her message on an optimistic note, writing:
“You are not defined by any one choice or thing. time heals and nothing is finite. it’s a process that’s never too late to begin. and so, here we go! this might be a weird thing to post but the honesty feels good if nothing else.”
We may look back fondly on ‘Friday’ now as that campy song that’s fun to dance to, but we also need to remember just how much unwarranted vitriol was aimed at Rebecca Black for nothing more than trying to pursue her dreams. That was an awful period for her and no one deserves that, especially a teenager who just wanted to release fun music.
But as Rebecca said herself, time heals and it’s just heartwarming to see how she’s managed to get herself in a much happier place now and doing what she wants to do… such as releasing banging new music.
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