The Illiterate

My pal Mackro has put together a list of 10 reasons why Rebecca Black is not only cooler than you think she is, but probably cooler than you are yourself. Giving the profits of “Friday” to her school and Japan relief is good enough, but the fact that she seems so levelheaded about the whole thing is another major point in her favor. She probably knows the lyrics are dumb, too, but what the hell, she was just having fun with her friends and her parents’ $2,000.

Mackro still doesn’t think much of the record, and though I find it hard to disagree with him, there’s still something strangely appealing about it. Black’s innocence, though she doesn’t sound naïve, strikes me as real enough. The beats are weaker than anything this side of Glee, and the lyrics seem to have been written by someone for whom English is not a first language, possibly not even a second—they make early ABBA sound like Walt Whitman.

Maybe that’s why, the second time I watched the video, I found myself thinking of Elton John’s “Solar Prestige A Gammon”, a track from his 1974 album Caribou. The melody, like so many of John’s in this period, is irresistibly catchy, but the lyrics, which fit the tune to perfection, are utter nonsense:

Solar prestige a gammon
Kool kar kyrie kay salmon
Hair ring molasses abounding
Common lap kitch sardine a poor floundin

As Robert Christgau pointed out at the time, it was a record that proved how unimportant lyrics could be in pop music—as long as you give the audience something they can hum along with.

“Friday” isn’t nearly as good, of course. Not just because Black and her producers aren’t Elton John, but because “Friday” tries too hard, in its own way, to be sensible. That makes the record funnier in an ironic way, but I don’t think there’s anything intentionally ironic about this song. There’s nothing particularly earnest about it, either: it’s a vanity record made to order by a vanity record company. Black probably wanted nothing more than to make herself look like a star and impress her friends and create a family keepsake. I doubt if she saw it as a shortcut to fame, even if that’s what it turned out to be. And I bet $2000 is less than some people spend on their failed auditions for American Idol.

What I can’t help but wonder is, if this hadn’t become a viral sensation, and if some indie geek happened upon it in a couple of years and spread the word, would it have been hailed as a masterpiece of “outsider” music? In an era of instant hits, is there any reason why we can’t have instant Shaggs?