Rebecca Hates Friday

Rebecca Black’s Friday is one of those songs that happened to the internet like a meteor. She was 13. The auto-tune was thick as a wall. The lyrics read like someone had described the concept of a day of the week to an alien who then tried to write a pop song based on that description alone. Within a week, everyone had an opinion, and the opinion was: this is the worst thing ever.

Two and a half years later, Rebecca confirmed what you’d expect. She hated it. Can’t blame her. Being the butt of a global joke at 13 is a particular kind of torture, and Friday was so thoroughly mocked that it seemed impossible for her to feel anything but revulsion toward her own voice.

But somewhere in the middle of all that contempt, something shifted. The song didn’t get better—it stayed exactly as ridiculous and overdone as it was on day one. Except people started quoting it differently. It became this weird shorthand for joy, chaos, the absurdity of the internet. An anthem, basically. The kind of song you’d never admit you liked, except that everyone did anyway.

I think it’s because Friday was incapable of pretense. It didn’t try to be cool or calculated. It just was what it was—overdone, earnest, kind of dumb—and in a world of engineered pop songs that go through seventeen rounds of focus groups, there’s something almost refreshing about that kind of innocent failure. Most terrible songs aspire to be better. Friday just existed, unaware that it would become the most famous mistake on YouTube.

Rebecca probably still hates it. But the song escaped her somehow. It’s not hers anymore—it’s everyone’s. That’s not a compliment exactly, but it’s not an insult either.