The video: A California teen and her festive, if numbingly dorky, music video have become an internet sensation, but early reviews suggest she's not the next Justin Bieber. (See the video below.) Rebecca Black's "Friday" video, a celebration of hard-earned weekend liberation, has racked up more than 2.3 million YouTube views... and been viciously panned by a number of commentators. In the video, Black, who resembles Disney pop princess Demi Lovato, offers clarifying lyrics like "Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday/Today is Friday, Friday/We we we so excited" in a heavily produced, occasionally auto-tuned voice, leaving bloggers to ponder a weighty question: "Is this the worst music video ever?"
The reaction: This song is a "bullet to your sense of hearing," says Michael K at Dlisted. It's like "a 5-year-old Ke$ha performed a song about the calendar on a water-damaged Casio keyboard after snorting glitter glue and swallowing a vibrating ball." Yes, and Black is "just the tip of a horrible iceberg called Ark Music Factory," says Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon. That's the newly launched production company behind this, and they have an entire roster of "very young, trying-very-hard girls." Maybe they just need to adjust their aim, says Megan Gibson at Time. I don't think Ark intended this as a joke, but they could just pretend. "Rebecca Black won't be the next Miley Cyrus (though that's not a bad thing), but she could have a future in comedy." Watch the clip:
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