Rebecca Black is back. Again.
The 19-year-old singer achieved a kind of flash-in-the-pan online notoriety in 2011 when her single Friday became the most hated and derided song on the Internet. An intoxicatingly noxious mix of autotune and white privilege, the young teenager was widely mocked by millions for earnestly gushing out lines as infamous as “Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal,” while making plans for a fun night with her tween gal pals who appear to be driving without any supervision.
Peaking at 46 in the Irish charts, Friday was an immediate viral sensation. The YouTube-released music video became a pop-cultural talking point, making Black and her song known all over the world, leaving people with the earworm “Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday,” stuck in their heads for months on end, and ratcheting more than 99m views.
And one more if you feel the need to refamiliarise yourself with her weekly agenda:
Now Black is making another bid for pop stardom with her new music video for The Great Divide. Released over the weekend on YouTube, the song opens with a video testimonial from Black, who explains some of the personal demons she has wrestled with since her debut catapulted her into the crosshairs of online trolls.
“Took me long enough, but I am so excited to finally share this music video with you guys. I have spent so long trying to perfect this and make it absolutely amazing, and part of me wanted to do this because I wanted to be like, ‘Ha! This perfect, yeah I can sing, y’all can’t say anything now and I wanted to prove everyone wrong,’” Black says.
“But at the same time, now that it’s here I have that within myself and I don’t need that anymore.”
You can take a look at the video for The Great Divide in full below:
