Wednesday 23 March 2011

Bieber vs Black

Just as I am coming to terms with the reality of cohabiting on earth with pint-sized pop pillock Justin Bieber, some thoughtless cretin goes ahead and deposits the equally talentless Rebecca Black onto my plane of existence. Please universe, make it stop! There are only so many vacuous, insipid “musicians” with which I can cope in a single lifetime, and the Biebster pipped Becky to the post. My biggest consternation is the fact that I’m not entirely sure where Justin crawled from in the first place. Who is he? No really, I’m not kidding. He appears one day and starts singing about babies when he’s only about five years old himself. Who the bloody hell is he?

And now you’re telling me that if Daddy pays for me to star in a video, I too can take over the internet and power my way to global domination? (A similar route, incidentally, to that taken by Paris Hilton . . . although perhaps her Daddy was less aware of the nature of said video, and if she started it off by asking “which seat should I take”, I can’t help but feel it wasn’t with quite the same outcome in mind).

I realise that asking for talent in 21st century chart-topping popstars is perhaps on the ambitious side, but can’t we at least have a little 3D personality? A smidgen of individuality, the occasional allusion to hidden darkness, a tendency towards acne, bad hair days, leprosy . . . and preferably a few scars, implied sexual misdemeanours or a history of trauma and endless pain lurking behind those shining baby blues? Is that so much to ask? Fact: if you have to say that something is fun more than once then it probably isn’t really that fun after all. Plus I resent being taught the days of the week at the age of 26. I already know that Tuesday comes after Wednesday thank you very much. And that’s why you’re a lonely blogger and I have over 34 million hits on YouTube.

Oh.

4 comments:

  1. In fairness, she's 13, and it was a bit of fun. Those are her actual friends in the video. Its not actually her fault that the lyrics were awful, she didn't write it- her mother actually queried the lyrical quality but by then the deed was done, as a 13 year old I doubt I'd have argued with grown ups telling me what to sing. They didn't have to auto-tune all the personality out of it either, she isn't a bad singer.

    I do however, accept that my defence of her might be motivated by my belief that the arts are a perfect outlet for escapism, innocence and fantasy, which in turn might reflect that in my current job I am working at a supported hostel for newly released offenders who are addicted to drugs and alcohol, and I've been involved in making 3 individuals homeless in the last 3 weeks by evicting them from the hostel. I might have had enough of reality for the afternoon...

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  2. Aww come on, be fair to poor Rebecca Black! She never asked for all the attention she's getting - she only ever really thought her family and friends would see it and enjoy it. There was some vague idea that it might be used in a portfolio (or whatever musicians have) if she later wanted to try for a singing career, but that was it. It's true that her parents paid for it, but so what? It's their money and they wanted to do it, and they weren't actually trying to make her famous. I think everyone has been rather taken aback by all the attention it's received.

    If she'd been snapped up by a big label who were now trying to foist her on everyone, claiming she was hugely talented and the best thing since sliced bread, then I'd understand people people so down on her. But that's not what happened - the only reason this started to get attention, as far as I can tell, is because some guy stumbled across it and included it in an article he was writing about bad lyrics. It says a lot to me that the 'vanity' label she used actually offered to take the video down when they realised she was getting abuse for it. To me she just seems like a normal teenage girl (albeit one with rather wealthy parents, apparently) and I think it's a real shame that she's getting so many personal attacks. Any criticism of the song should be directed at the terrible lyrics and the horrible autotuning, but Rebecca herself was just having some fun.

    I just find it hilarious that the whole reason she's so famous is precisely because of all the people crying 'make it stop!' And I personally hope she just enjoys it while it lasts and then goes back to being a regular schoolkid who can laugh at all the people who've made her slightly richer by hating her so much.

    Still, it does just go to show that you never know who's watching when you put something up on the internet for all to see. It's rather terrifying to think that someone could put up a video of you singing karaoke for a laugh and then suddenly it's being posted all over the world so that people can talk about how crap you are.

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  3. Also, favourite comment was "forget Bieber fever, I've got Black Plague."

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