Ten years after she shot to viral fame with Friday, that earnest track about loving the last day of the week that turned a 13-year-old into a cultural touchstone, Rebecca Black is ready to reintroduce herself with her longest project to date: Rebecca Black Was Here.
With inspirations like SOPHIE and 100 gecs, it’s little surprise that Rebecca Black’s found creativity and confidence in the surreal realms of hyperpop – the glitchy, sugary genre is both bubbly and effervescent, while abrasive and aggressive; like fairy floss with knives protruding out of it.
It takes the notion of saccharine pop and pushes it far beyond its boundaries, if only to see what it would sound like – and it sounds like the inner workings of the internet itself. So for someone whose notoriety and early stardom came from the chaos of the internet (and its unrelenting desire to make anything into a joke), turning that energy back on itself and finding confidence in music that sounds exactly like the online world is powerful.
Rebecca Black Was Here is a playful yet mature reintroduction of Rebecca Black, the Friday girl, redefined as Rebecca Black, the artist.
Not only has she spent the last 12 months reclaiming the track that made a household name by remixing and re-releasing it earlier this year, she’s reclaimed her image, pushed her own creative boundaries, learned to trust her gut and stick to her guns, and how to trust the process.
Finding confidence is a big point for 23-year-old Rebecca, admitting that it’s something she’s struggled with throughout her teenage years in the fallout of Friday.
“My confidence finally feels like something where I can really back myself up,” she told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“And that was something I’ve struggled with having for ever since Friday, really.”
And so with Rebecca Black Was Here, we’re being introduced to all the parts of her life where she’s found her footing, resulting in a collection of tracks that explore the different facets of Rebecca Black in 2021. It’s her moment, and she’s grabbing onto it with both hands.
Though each track is an unreserved bop, where her influences and inspirations shine through, they’re all different sides of the same whole. The risks she’s taken and boundaries she’s pushed have resulted in a project that’s sonically and thematically well-rounded, proving that Rebecca Black isn’t the one-dimensional caricature that was thrust into the online spotlight at puberty’s starting line.
“I feel like, life would be so bleak if it was defined by one thing,” she said.
“Especially if it was, you know, early on in their lives and their whole experience.
“We kind of fill our days and our entertainment with these characters, and these things that feel very much like, ‘this is who they are, this is what they were this one point in time, and this is who they’ll be forever’ – but that’s just not what what life is like.”
Rebecca Black Was Here is out now, everywhere you stream your tunes.
