Who is Rebecca Black?

If you've been on the Internet at all this week, chances are good that someone forwarded you a copy of teen singer Rebecca Black's new single, "Friday," probably with a comment about what a terrible song it is.

The song is, in fact, terrible. Worse than terrible. Here it is.

Black nonchalantly talks about getting up in the morning, eating a bowl of cereal, waiting for a bus, trying to decide which seat to take in a friend's car (we suppose the bus exploded on a bridge somewhere), and going to a party. The lyrics don't really develop past that point. In a heavily autotuned voice, Black sings the days of the week and chants, "partying, partying, fun, fun fun," sounding somewhat like a preteen narcoleptic robot.

Meanwhile, the video portrays the teen going to a party with friends who look as alarmed to be starring in a music video as Black herself. They stand around throwing their hands in the air and screaming, "yeah." At no time do any parents show up and take their thirteen year old children home from an unsupervised house party.

The music video comes to use courtesy of Ark Music Factory, a Hollywood, California music and video production company that states its goal as "to discover future #1 artists and produce the next outstanding star."

For some reason, all of their videos also seem to feature a middle-aged rapper, which can be confusing and even a little creepy considering the sub-teen clientele of Ark Music Factory. Granted, his rapping is inoffensive-in "Friday," he basically rhymes about how angry he is at buses that get in front of him-but it's like someone's dad just showed up in the middle of a song.

It's hard to tell whether Rebecca Black is a talented singer or not thanks to the autotune and laughable lyrics like "Tomorrow is Saturday / And Sunday comes afterwards." It's probably too soon to make any judgement-after all, she's 13, and she's likely somewhat horrified by the sudden popularity and cruel comments (including some in this article) directed towards her video.

Rebecca Black shouldn't worry; we're laughing at the over-production and terrible lyrics supplied by Ark Music Factory, not a poor teenage girl. Ark claims to have worked with major artists like Miley Cyrus, and given their high production value for children's music, it's somewhat likely that their claims are real.

" Friday" will only be famous as a laughingstock, but don't blame Rebecca Black. She's just a teenage girl with pop-singer aspirations. Watch the video, laugh, and hope that Black enjoys (or at least quickly passes through) her fifteen minutes of fame.

Sources:

" About Us," ArkMusicFactory.com.