Last summer, during the course of my class, Introduction to the Study of Popular Music (M403J,) I wrote a blog entry about\u00a0Rebecca Black and her song entitled”Friday”. It\u00a0was just peaking\u00a0at one million hits on Youtube, and promised to go much higher. I liked it.\u00a0“Friday”\u00a0is catchy, devoid of inner meaning, and polished to a brilliant production shine. It had also been mercilously pounded by professional and amateur critics way out of proportion to its tweenie\u00a0dreamworld.\u00a0The crime? Trite lyrics, sung\u00a0by an unremarkable (if surprisingly accomplished) voice, compounded by\u00a0an entirely inauthentic context. The reception to the song was a wildly diverse, ranging from fan-based admiration to death threats. Essentially, it appealed to the wrath of those who see it as yet another force in the dumbing down of culture.<\/p>\n
Now it seems\u00a0that Rebecca Black\u00a0has got the last laugh by receiving an affirmation from an entirely unexpected quarter, mega-pop star Katy Perry. Of course, I am using the names “Rebecca” and “Katy” with the full understanding that their names are code for vast production teams and financial interests, although I grant that Rebecca started from a much more modest place.<\/p>\n
Katy has starred in a song and\u00a0related video called, Last Friday Night,\u00a0which is a\u00a0responce to Rebecca’s\u00a0musical and video production.<\/p>\n
[youtube]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KlyXNRrsk4A[\/youtube]<\/p>\n
The song’s lyrics are as shallow as Rebecca’s piece, and incidental to the video. They are nothing more than\u00a0a litany of cliches describing “the day after”. The music, on the other hand,\u00a0has a great groove with its romansca-like\u00a0harmonic movement\u00a0channeled through\u00a0 a\u00a0sequencer emulating a 70s guitar amp.<\/p>\n
The video, hands down,\u00a0is excellent,\u00a0with impossibly high production\u00a0values to its credit. It\u00a0is cast as a\u00a0movie, cut from the same cloth as any teen flick from the 70s to now.\u00a0The\u00a0landscapes are\u00a0the same “burbs” as Arcade Fire’s Suburbs\u00a0, but without any pretentions towards social commentary. In fact, it is a paragon of all that is dubious in\u00a0the land of North American\u00a010 per centers.<\/p>\n
Everything in Perry’s video is a superlative echo of Rebecca’s shallow\u00a0ode to Friday. As\u00a0we get\u00a0into the narrative we see Katy Perry, portraying a hapless tweenie with an alarming dental appliance, ill-fitting clothes, and whiny voice, demanding entry into a crowded neighbour’s house to complain about the party noise. Who should come to the door but Rebecca Black herself.\u00a0Katy is instantly welcomed\u00a0by the delirious, dancing crowd and with the help and insistence\u00a0of Rebecca, she transforms into\u00a0one of the Gap party animals, albeit as a\u00a0cheesy femme fatale.\u00a0The explosion of music, dance and mayhem moves out to the back yard of the upscale suburban home,\u00a0 to be\u00a0greeted by\u00a0one of the most reviled of\u00a0soft-adult, kitsch musicians in pop music history, Kenny G (called “Uncle Kenny” in the narrative interlude). He\u00a0appears on the deck high above the party-goers but instead of cranking out his usual syrup on a\u00a0soprano sax,\u00a0he\u00a0wails\u00a0a\u00a0ripping great alto sax riff leading to impossible high notes. The next day, Katy Perry wakes up \u00a0in her own bed\u00a0surrounded by party detritus, including the jock adonis who was the focus of her intense female gaze the night before. Naturally her parents walk in on her unexpectantly\u00a0after returning too soon from a holiday, but being Valley Parents, no consequence follows. The credits roll, furthering reinforcing the ambiance of a 70s (or 90s?) teen\u00a0movie.<\/p>\n
Throughout the entire visual feast, Katy Perry\u00a0never steps out of her nerdy character, despite the gamble that such a physical anomaly could present to an adoring public expecting\u00a0the usual\u00a0look of the\u00a0“Katy Perry” brand of sexualized princess. Even when she transforms into a cartoon femme fatale, she still manages to look unattractive. Nevertheless, her singing voice maintains\u00a0its signature attractiveness which is normally mirrored in her physical persona.<\/p>\n
In short, her character, Kenny G’s appearance, Rebecca Black’s starring role, all subvert the criticisms cruelly directed to Rebecca Black by embracing them in a superlative musical and visual\u00a0production.<\/p>\n
The video\u00a0is the best pop music can offer. It simultaneously offers food for thought to tweeny girls wrestling with the demands of negotiating\u00a0personal identity while\u00a0accommodating the\u00a0role-models of a prom queen and runway models. It is also an\u00a0invigorating dance track in a blaze of colour, and a vision of fun in the company of like-minded friends. Of course, a case can be made for the damage done by such a profligate representation, but I hardly doubt that Katy and Rebecca’s tweeny fans\u00a0are so shallow as to mindlessly follow the lead offered by the video’s portrayal of sex, drugs, alcohol. Tweenie females\u00a0are not\u00a0lemmings headed en masse to the ocean cliff, partly confirmed in Gerry Bloustein’s ethnographic essay entitled ” ‘Ceci N’est Pas une Jeune Fille’: Videocams, Representation and ‘Othering’ in the Worlds of Teen-age Girls,” in Hop On Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture<\/em>, edited by Henry Jenkins et al. (2002).<\/p>\n Not to be outdone, the punk band Woe Is Me, jumped on the wagon with\u00a0an emo cover version that pushes the boundaries of subversion even further.<\/p>\n