In what’s surely the biggest journalistic coup since God talked to Moses, much-discussed singer and calendar enthusiast Rebecca Black finally granted her first interview Thursday to The Daily Beast. In it, she points out the obvious: She’s only 13, she didn’t even write that stupid “Friday” song, and all you internet dummies need to find some other reservoir to dump all the hatred in your lives.
That's right, the media hate-love pendulum seems to be swinging to love for ol' Rebecca Black. The Daily Beast story recounts details of Black’s involvement with the L.A.-based vanity label Ark Music Factory that have already been reported extensively by a media apparently bored by earthquakes and labor union strife. Black says she also recorded a song “about adult love,” but “I haven’t experienced that yet,” so she ended up choosing “Friday” as the song to make a video for and post on YouTube. As for the hyperbolic reaction to the song, Black says the “hurtful comments really shocked me” and “at times, it feels like I’m being cyberbullied.”
But did Black realize just how easy of a target she was putting out there for public consumption? Black’s mother Georgina Kelly admits that “a few times, when I heard some of the lyrics, I was like, ‘That doesn’t make sense,” but “Rebecca said, ‘I sang it as they wrote it, Mom.’ So I didn’t micromanage it.” (What some call “micromanaging” others might call “parenting,” but we’re not here to judge.) Both Ark and Black apparently were “shocked” when the YouTube comments section went ballistic after the video was posted, which is perhaps the most egregious example yet of the mammoth amounts of delusion on display in this whole ordeal. Ark offered to take the video down, but Black insisted that it stay there, in order to “not to give the haters the satisfaction that they got me so bad I gave up.” (It was also too late.)
Rebecca Black’s media tour continued this morning on Good Morning America, which picked up on the cyberbullying storyline. In the interview, Black comes off like a typical teenager—she even has Bieber fever!—and a decent singer, ripping off a few solid bars of "The Star Spangled Banner." So, c'mon, say something nice about Rebecca Black now that her fame clock is at 14:30 and counting.