Going viral at any age isn’t necessarily easy, but it was especially rough for Rebecca Black when her “Friday” video unexpectedly caught the world’s attention 10 years ago — when she was just 13 years old. Now, Rebecca’s reintroducing herself to the world with her queer pop project, Rebecca Black Was Here.
Made up of six tracks, and featuring previous singles ‘Girlfriend’ and ‘Worth It For The Feeling’, check out the full track list below!
‘Rebecca Black Was Here’ Tracklisting:
- Better In My Memory
- Personal
- NGL
- Blue
- Worth It For The Feeling
- Girlfriend
Rebecca Renee Black born June 21, 1997 is an American YouTuber and singer who gained extensive media coverage when the music video for her 2011 single “Friday” went viral on YouTube and other social media sites. “Friday” was derided by many music critics and viewers, who dubbed it “the worst song ever”. Black went on to release other songs including her Dave Days collaboration “Saturday”. She currently uploads videos on her YouTube channel about various topics.
Is Rebecca Black the very first pop star of Gen Z? Quite possibly – just six years after the launch of YouTube, she accidentally went viral with her auto-tune-heavy track ‘Friday’. As she reeled off the days of the week in a nonsensical fashion, and agonised over whether to call shotgun on her mate’s front seat, the song was accompanied by a low-budget, green screened music video. The amateurish song exploded online, briefly turning the 13-year-old into the Main Character of the internet.
When ‘Friday’ turned Rebecca Black into the week’s biggest punchline, she could have taken if offline – but instead, she seemed determined to turn things around. Just a few months later, she made a cameo in Katy Perry’s ‘Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)’ video, while her 2007 follow-up ‘Saturday’ saw her take the piss out of her viral moment with a knowing wink. Since then, the Californian artist has been steadily releasing music of increasingly impressive quality – peaking with last year’s parping synth-pop singles ‘Closer’ and ‘Self-Sabotage’. Earlier this year, 10 years on from ‘Friday’ Black tied her surreal rise to notoriety up with a neat bow, enlisting 3OH!3, Big Freedia, 100 gecs‘ Dylan Brady and Dorian Electra for a deliciously chaotic remix.
Fronted by a vacantly grinning Black with slime pouring out of her mouth, new release ‘Rebecca Black Was Here’ is filled with that same sense of fun. While her 2017 debut EP ‘RE/BL’ felt like a broadly underwhelming collection of pop songs on which she struggled to unearth any newness, its six-track follow-up gives a far clearer sense of who Black is as a musician, knitting together the weirdness of hyper-pop with the melodic heft of mainstream pop.
Though ‘Rebecca Black Was Here’ takes numerous clear cues from contemporary pop – notably, the experimental and robotic music of Charli XCX, the closely related hyper-pop scene and PC Music, plus the juggernaut melodies of Katy Perry – it also succeeds in centring Black’s own voice. Finally, she seems to have taken control of the narrative which ran wild beyond her control for so many years. She’s always been a dab hand at getting the last laugh.
