Rebecca Black – Friday
The song is exactly as bad as you remember. Tinny, rhythmically confused, lyrics that sound like they were workshopped by someone who’d never actually talked to a teenager. But here’s what gets me: a thirteen-year-old girl hired a producer, dropped a single, and became the most mocked person on the internet for the crime of not being good. The internet decided she was the thing to hate that week, and it was vicious. Everyone had a bit, a meme, a reason to pile on. The song is forgettable; what lingers is the cruelty of it, how quickly we turn on something unfamiliar just because we can. She can’t even hear the song the way we do—she’ll never have that clean first listen that most artists get. It’s already been poisoned.