Rebecca Black

1 post

The Trouble With Normal

It always gets worse.

By now, you’ve likely heard “Friday” by Rebecca Black.  It’s easy to criticize on any number of levels.  It’s vapid.  It’s an idol farm’s vanity project to to milk rich parents of their money.  It’s overproduced to the point of sterility.  The singer’s voice is so saturated by pitch correction that it sounds like fingernails being raked across a blackboard.

In short, it’s everything that’s wrong with pop music.  But it’s also the new normal.  For all the mocking and vitriol, everyone’s heard it.