If Meat Loaf had a son who did Rebecca Black covers...

...It would be a lot like the Matt Mulholland version of the execrable "Friday." Whenever that song goes back in my head, Matt's version pulls me back from the brink of insanity. Thank you Matt, for proving turd-polishing is not a lost art. Video link. (PS: Sorry for breaking the BB press blackout on she who must not be named.)

Andrea James is a writer, director, producer and activist based in Los Angeles. Her work often focuses on consumer activism, the free culture movement, exogenous mysticism, humor, and LGBT rights.

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Anonymous

Wow. This is just terrible.
Nate the great

Is it just me or is there something wrong with an industry when the songs that mock major releases are actually better than the original?
tom frog

I’m waiting for the Mark Knopfler/Eric Clapton version, myself…
dculberson

This is actually amazing. I similarly had not heard the original and made the mistake of looking it up before watching this video. He manages to re-imagine everything about it and turn it into a masterpiece. I love Mulholland.
Antinous / Moderator

Is it just me or is there something wrong with an industry when the songs that mock major releases are actually better than the original?

I don’t understand why they didn’t replace Justin Timberlake when this came out.
davy_k

This makes me wish Matt Mullholland was my best friend. In a way, he already is.
Disasteradio

Why are people everywhere attributing this to “The Record Industry”? It’s not like she’s even *signed*, unless you count ARK which is, like it or not, an independant label. Haha.. or, for some, are the chickens of participatory / Youtube culture that have come home to roost too hideous to acknowledge? ..

Anyway if we’re talking “Trust Fund Pop”, “My Jeans” by Jenna Rose is an INFINITELY stronger track, haha man am I loving this stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DwT_2QQU64 (Trig bought a new Blackberry)
shadowfreak

i’m partial to this cover:
http://www.youtube.com/user/EmmaKalieParodies#p/u/1/1DdMmQ0VgzY
Blue

I always assumed the Rebecca Black song was just vanity publishing – a company that produces videos & the buyer’s music with pretty good production values in return for cash – and nothing more.

Anything else just doesn’t make sense!
Anonymous

The second I hit play my autistic son shot out of his chair, rushed across the room, leaned down over my computer for a look/listen, then yelled in my face… “Turn it up!” (c: His taste is pretty selective. James Taylor and The Beatles, I guess I should throw some Meatloaf in the mix.
Anonymous

Interview w/the girl: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/rebecca-black-dont-think-im-worst-singer-13164800

She’s got kind of a good attitude about the whole thing.
drunken_orangetree

When I first saw Rebecca Black’s video I thought it was a typically cute, cookie-cutter pop song. That people are latching on to this song as something extraordinary surely says more about those people than Rebecca Black. And why would someone direct that kind of venom–”execrable ‘Friday’”–at a 13 year old girl?
Godfree

Okay, you know what? I don’t even care. And I’m one of those who don’t like comments from people who don’t care. I don’t like Meat Loaf necessarily, I don’t know from Rebecca Black. I don’t know why She Must Not Be Named. After reading these comments, I’m certainly not going to bother watching the video.

As far as I’m concerned, She Who Must Not Be Named rhymes, like bardfinn suggested, with Farrah Failin.

So as not to be a complete waste of bandwidth, here: read some Pharyngula.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/so_thats_what_they_mean_by_the.php
Andrea James

@drunken_orangetree (and perennially grumpy lmnop): The song IS execrable (and not written by her). In fact, the song and video content were largely out of her control. However, it’s the perfect storm of execrable elements that makes it very hard to get out of your head. I made no negative comments about Rebecca Black, and I believe the cover is actually a pretty clever reply that isn’t mean-spirited.

People making fun of things… welcome to the internet!
- lmnop
  
  I think my perennial grumpiness has a lot to do with the boingboing hipster hypocrisy (or maybe it’s just the internet in general). You know, the whole sort of “I liked them before they became famous” vibe, like we’ve all got the inside track here or something. How photoshopping sucks and we call people on it, but if someone else gets their dander up about possible photoshopping, then we’ll call them on it, too (but no one better call us out on anything).
  
  But hey, it’s the internet, so we make fun of things (such as, in our earlier colloquy, someone who wrote a whimsical NYT op-ed piece). Most often it’s commenters who are the most damaging, but the before-the-cut content often does a good job of nudging the rest of us into action.
  
  Also, I’m not sure how “she who must not be named” is meant to be taken, if not as a comment on that person… but apparently this is a positive or at the very least neutral comment on her? (presumably, if the comment was directed solely at the song and not the person, it would be the song that must not be named)
brerrabbit23

I’m still waiting for Johnny Cash’s estate to release his cover of Gir’s “Doom Song”.
Anonymous

I’m so conflicted. The lyrics are completely worthless. Yet the singing and production, while no Meatloaf, is quite good.

Despite the sage advice of several here, I went and listened to the original. I’m conflicted about that too. I mean, she’s just a kid, but the Zeroth Law demands I protect humanity by “disliking” it.

Decided it was not important enough to spend emotion on, and went to my playlists for some Mahler to calm my soul.
tw15

At least In England we don’t have middle class pop stars and talent show contestants dominating our music charts. Come to think of it…

I don’think anyone in Europe has heard of either of these people.
Suburbancowboy

ARK Music Factory will make a video for anyone who pays them.

I would guess that ARK takes a listen to the singer, and based off of looks and vocal skills, decides which song from their catalog of crap they churn out, to give them. The worse the singer, the worse the song they give them. Don’t want to waste a potential pop hit on a bad singer. And then they auto tune it to death. That said the girl sounded much better singing live on GMA, than on that awful production.

If you go to ARk’s page on YouTube, they have an “opening night party” where a bunch of ARK’s “talent” performed. For most of them, it was their first time performing in front of an audience, and they were laughably bad. All of them.

That isn’t how the music industry works, you aren’t supposed to make a music video, and then play in front of a crowd. You are supposed to bust your ass playing out, and if you are lucky, then you get a music video. And you end up owing the label for it.
jonw

Boingboing, how could you. I read this blog because I try to live in a bubble of things that don’t suck. Please add a warning not to watch/hear the original song. Somewhere a few of my brain cells are now forever wasted, storing the fact that this song exists. Dear god, it is bad.
- TenInchesTaller
  
  how will you survive. stay strong, buddy.
gijoel

I’m kind of partial to the Bob Dylan cover

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FISHEO3gsM

Though there’s debate as to whether it’s him or not.
bkad

I had never heard of the original song, so I looked it up. I cannot advise following in my foot steps. If you are similarly ignorant…. stay that way.
SonOfSamSeaborn

We can call this shit a Mulholland chaser, although I don’t think I’ve heard you guys mention SWMNBN before now.
Anonymous

Love the production values…. Touches of Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody.

The song, especially the original. Gives monkey scrondles.
Anonymous

Listen to bkad! I did not follow his advice and now my ears are bleeding.
Snig

Reminds me of the “If I had a million dollars” cover by BNL. Reversed moods, song much much improved.
mgfarrelly

I confess, I don’t get the outpouring of epic hatred for young Ms. Black’s little song. Shs’s all of 13 years old and the amount of bile being produced over her video seems on par with what your average genocidal dictator would inspire. Take it down a few notches people, really.

That said, nothing like a fine parodist to make something fun for all.
- Nate the great
  
  The problem with SWMNBN is that she would best be described as Kei$ha, only without the talent.
  - lmnop
    
    She’s exactly like Ke$ha? Except for the fact her message is completely different and she dresses completely different and she doesn’t really pretend to be a good singer or think people should pay for her music. And except she’s a 13-year-old girl doing what may just be the 21st century equivalent of singing into a hairbrush for the well-heeled set.
    
    http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/03/18/134652534/ridiculed-youtube-singer-rebecca-black-grabs-a-mountain-of-bull-by-the-horns
    
    And the original isn’t a major release, it was a vanity production.
    
    It was only a few boingboing posts ago that we had outrage over the outrage about the supposedly-photoshopped Wired cover, with the observation that “Angry people will find something to be angry about here!” Well, people are finding something to get angry about over the “Friday” video, and in this case many are taking it out on a 13-year-old girl. A wonderful thing, indeed.
- Anonymous
  
  The bile could be spewing forth as a direct result of the pure lack of singing talent and turning an old civil rights era song into an abomination that is focused on trivial matters.
  
  That’s just my guess…
Anonymous

This is GREAT….

I think I have to cut myself now.
bardfinn

SWMNBN: First name rhymes with “Jelly”, Politicial affiliation GOP;
alternately First name rhymes with Farrah, Last name rhymes with Failin’, Political affiliation GOP;
alternately someone who identifies as two distinct long-wavelength visible photonic emission spectra.
Flying_Monkey

Err… Meatloaf is already ‘execrable’. And people who do covers of ‘execrable’ songs in the style of Meatload… I think that makes it triply ‘execrable’: to use Andrea’s metaphour, it’s like using turd-polish on a turd with a turd cloth.
- dculberson
  
  Meatloaf is “execrable?” Man, you need to get out more! He’s amazing.
  
  Not everything is Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.
  - Anonymous
    
    Well I for one like Meatloaf and Bach (though I’d choose Bach if I had to give up one forever), don’t care who photoshops what, and recommend listening to this:
    
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q6gOm39V-s
    
    Personally, I think my fellow netizens on average would benefit from taking little things just a bit less seriously; but since this is the interwebs, I try not to take the ostensibly serious phrasing of others too seriously.
    
    In person one can read body language, demeanor, tone of voice, ect… Observing these things, especially over any length of time and multiple encounters, is, IMHO, a much more reliable way to assess the thoughts behind words than what can be plumbed from reading comments like this. Even a writer and/or blogger whose thoughts a reader may have a prolonged and detailed experience with is still, to a significant degree, filtered by the low bandwidth (relative to real-life) of our still nascent cyberspace. Perhaps future generations will find it hard to imagine a net where users couldn’t simply trade thoughts directly. PsiBook anyone? :P
    
    Aaron
Anonymous

cover is better, by a lot. original singer, rebecca black, needs voice lessons to get the midwest out of her voice, it’s really harsh. It’s not terrible or any worse than a lot of stuff out there. This version is significantly better though.
Anonymous

Wonderful voice but seriously….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVXrLxOTJk4

Comparisons to the king of the power ballad only make us old folks go wandering down memory lane.