Interjecting My Opinion

One thing I've noticed about my writing on this blog is that I seem to make a noticeable effort not to offend anybody.  Actually, I'm pretty much the same way in real life too.  The easiest way to avoid offending people is to simply not interject your opinions about certain things; in other words playing it safe.  I'm all for this, but I need to go out on a limb here and address something that's really been bothering me lately.

Unless you've been living underground with the mole people, you've probably heard of the song Friday by Rebecca Black.  In the past few weeks, the song and music video have gotten over 82,000,000 views, and almost as many negative, rude and just plain offensive comments.  This thirteen year old girl is being ridiculed by millions of people on the internet in response to her auto-tuned singing and (for want of a better word) illogical music video that features thirteen year old kids driving and partying on a school day.

Now, along with seemingly 99.9% of the population, I don't actually like this song or the video.  Personally I'm not a big fan of teenager-sung pop songs, and I'd much rather stick to artists from before I was even born like ELO, Elton John, The Cure, Led Zepplin, things like that.  But that doesn't give me (or anyone else for that matter) the right to attack this girl and her song.  And I'm not talking about clicking the thumbs down button on youtube, I'm talking about leaving a comment telling Rebecca Black you hope she gets run over by a car or goes and cuts herself.

I also want to point out something interesting I discovered.  Rebecca Black can actually carry a tune.  In this video, while being interviewed on Good Morning America, she is asked to sing the national anthem.  And guess what? It sounds just fine!  Actually, it's better than fine.  It's just plain good singing.  I, personally, was impressed, and I recommend you watch the video too:

My opinion is that auto-tuned pop just isn't her genre and she would be better at singing show tunes and things like that.  Although really, auto-tuned pop isn't a great genre for anybody to excel at singing.  Unless you're T-Pain.  But he auto-tunes himself to the point where it's a trademark.  He's not trying to fool you into thinking he can sing, he just wants to sound like he is.

I digress... but in summary, PLEASE stop hating on Rebecca Black.  It's mean, offensive, rude and just plain immature.  She's thirteen for crying out loud.  Thirteen year old girls can be pretty emotionally fragile.  (I would know, I used to be one.)  If you don't like her song, just stop listening to it and move on with your life.