Juice Columnist

By now, there’s a fairly good chance that Rebecca Black has exposed you or someone you know to the song “Friday.” As of this writing, 78 million people have viewed the 13 year-old’s video on YouTube. This means that over one-fourth of the American population have seen this “unique” musical showcase.

If you’ve seen the video, then you know why the song is funny. It has nothing to do with the girl’s voice (at least it doesn’t for me). Instead, it’s the lyrics that make me laugh. Here’s a taste: “Gotta get down to the bus stop / Gotta catch my bus, I see my friends (My friends) / Kickin’ in the front seat / Sittin’ in the back seat / Gotta make my mind up / Which seat can I take?”

Seriously, she’s singing about which seat in the car to pick! Oh how great it would be to have so few worries in the world that where to sit in a car is a big decision. I won’t even paste the lyrics where she sings about the days of week because, seriously, that’s something that each person needs to experience on their own.

To say the least, my initial reaction to this song was how horrible pop music targeted at teenagers has become. My plan was to ridicule the lack of creativity and the lameness of the song. It was going to be a great article of a 20-something ripping on a 13 year-old’s attempt at a song. People were going to be proud of my maturity level. After that I was going to scream at babies for being too cute. However, before I could start writing that version of the article, I had to remember back to my youth and a little song called, “Mmmop,” by Hanson.

The classic gem that is “Mmmbop” came out in 1997 and I still don’t know what that song is about or how those brothers could have any huge insights to share. Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge) claims the song is about friendship but I have a feeling the Hanson brothers wrote the entry so I can’t trust it’s validity. It would be easy to repress that regrettable time in my musical past but I might as well own up to it.

We all have songs like that from our past. Almost the entire 80s fall into the category of music that people should be ashamed to listen to. In the 1990s there were enough boy bands to launch an all-out assault on Canada. I’m probably going to alienate a few people here, but the current crop of pop musicians aren’t any better than Rebecca Black, either (I’m looking at you, Ke$ha).

I say all this not to slam Rebecca Black, Ke$ha or Hanson but rather to remind us that we all have big gaps of musical logic from time to time. In the end, it’s extremely rare that any of the current popular songs are going to be considered classics in the future. Centuries from now, music students won’t be talking about brilliant lyrics such as, “brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack / cause when I leave for the night I ain’t comin’ back.” Instead, those students are going to be talking about the true geniuses of music, Mozart, Bach and Bieber.