Two weeks ago, a certain song hit the Internet. There was nothing particularly unique about this song, except that it was really, really bad. I'm talking, of course, about Rebecca Black's "Friday."
But Rolling Stone brought up an interesting possibility, one that is confirmed in a very dark and misanthropic way by Ark Music Factory's website itself. "Friday" is an "unintentional parody of modern pop." But hang on. On Good Morning America, we are told that Black is not responsible for the lyrics of the song, and that her mother thought they were dumb. This means that someone at Ark Music Factory wrote the song and simply had her perform it.
This is what happened with Justin Bieber, who, along with 4 other songwriters (as a 13-year-old kid, how much creative control would they give him?), composed "Baby." In fact, this happens also with American Idol winners, like Adam Lambert, who is only once listed in the song credits for his debut album.
So what makes Ark Music Factory so bad? Ark Music Factory is an independent--dare I say--amateur record label based in California, and...hey! They removed their About page! That's weird. When the About page existed (because I checked it out after watching Black's video), it basically claimed that they support artists of all genres. This might be true, but the 8 artists they feature are either pop or rap (the creepy 30-year-old black dude cruising behind the school bus waiting to have fun on the weekend in the video is named Pato, and is the only male artist listed. He also looks to be twice as old as any of the female artists, which is why I find him creepy in the Friday video). Furthermore, the seven female artists look quite young and basically seem to sing the same kind of music that Rebecca Black did.
Now here's the really creepy part. If you click on any artist's profile, you see what looks like a failed MySpace template, and it's hard to imagine who these "friends" are, especially because no one's really heard of Ark Music before "Friday", and my best guess would be that most of these "friends" are record company employees or schoolmates. Most of them also do not have profile pictures.
The irony here is that Ark Music appears to me to be more callous and finance-driven than even the big-name members of the RIAA.
We are free to lampoon "Friday" and Ark Music as much as we wish, but this whole situation, as Rolling Stone claimed, tells us a lot about how we consume music. Some speculate that the entire idea behind Ark Music and Rebecca Black was that if Justin Beiber could do it, they could, too. And to a degree, they could. It's fairly easy, especially with a poorly-written song and epileptic flip-book animation to boot. We just ate it up, and my writing about it only increases its fame (infamy).
So what does Rebecca Black say about pop culture? Rebecca Black betrays the increasing reality that creativity as an attribute is no longer necessary for any kind of recognition or fame. Take the most mundane and the most absurd activities--deciding which seat to take, for example--write a song about them, hire a naive 13-year-old girl to perform it, and voila! You have a hit.
By this point, I would think that writing a pop song could be done by reprogramming Watson: Have Watson analyze the lyrics from every pop song from the 80s to today, and have it compose lyrics using elements from previous songs. Someone may have to correct his grammar and syntax, but then again, maybe not.
In fact, it could be that this depersonalized and ultimately meaningless transformation can be transplanted onto other genres as well, so long as nearly every artist in a given genre sings about the same thing.
The crux of the problem is that many of these artists, especially contest winners and 13-year-old children, do not have creative control. The quality of the music to a degree depends upon who has creative control. But could we expect Rebecca Black to write something better than "Friday"? Nobody has ever asked her, but surely her life cannot be as vacuous as the song she put on the Internet.
In fact, in all of this, despite the tragedy of the song she sang, Rebecca Black is a nice, normal little girl. And she has a decent voice when put to the national anthem. While I doubt Ark Music would ever give her the chance, I'd like to see her write something on her own.
The irony is that her song would probably not make any money because I don't think she knows how to manipulate the lyrics to a tune that hypnotizes her classmates to buy it. But it would be her own, and that to me is what's important.
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