It's been one week since 13-year-old Rebecca Black's breezily incoherent pop tune "Friday," and its much-mocked music video hit the internet. (Watch it here, if you dare.) Since then, "Friday" has gobbled up more than 16 million YouTube views, inspiring many a parody video, and earning distinction as quite possibly the "worst song ever." Not so fast, says Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. "Friday" is actually a good song in a certain cheesy vein, and blinky Rebecca Black has a "realness" that pop stars like Katy Perry and Ke$ha can only try to emulate. Here, an excerpt:
Is this a good song? Yes, it is, in ways that are not hard to hear for anybody who likes their pop music on the trashy side. There’s the Depechiness of the synth-pop surge, the Ace of Base touch of Euro- melodic melancholy (that chorus is totally "The Sign"), the Miami-style stuttering bass (compare the immortal “Whoomp! There It Is”). But especially, it’s the pleading robot voice she uses to sing the word “Furrriiiiday,” investing the word with all sorts of yearning and anticipation, and the blotto-tuned gawkiness of it just makes it more believable.
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