Top 100 moments in Rebecca Black's "Friday" music video

She's playing standard chords on her guitar, so she's not quite some unschooled savant.

this is a girl who can't sing in tune, it's not the second coming of the shaggs.

xxxpost maybe she just farted

I want a duet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D5148rRIkw

Let's make this happen

Ahah this is great. I couldn’t help laughing in public while listening to it like a maniac.
What’s the link to R. Black though ?

It's almost as if she's never heard singing before until someone described the act of singing to her and she decided to take a stab at it based upon that description.

Eh, matching pitch is a skill that has to be learned for most people, myself certainly included. I've heard plenty of people who sound pretty similar to this in studios or schools.

The live Taylor cover def feels/sounds to me like a sort of trolling (as artistic strategy).

I usually understand "trolling" to mean that someone's main goal is to provoke and antagonize. I don't see that, based on the audience's reaction; if she was trolling them, she wasn't very successful.

The more recent comments on the video do show negative reactions but the comments from when she first posted it don't.

It's almost as if she's never heard singing before until someone described the act of singing to her and she decided to take a stab at it based upon that description.

Yeah, that was my first impression: like an alien or someone living in a rainforest heard Taylor Swift and tried doing it herself.

Also reminiscent of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr3R8aSjkAk

3. she picked a very nice note to sing and was v wise in not straying far from it

― Sheneneh et Caro (Stevie D(eux)), Saturday, March 12, 2011 6:26 PM (ten years ago)

still curious about the Rebecca Black connection. is it cos this person has gone viral with a terrible song?

it's the only reason I can see tbh -- in addition to them both being female.

This is nothing like Rebecca Black imo.

otm

As for 'terrible', I found it quite compelling

because you thought she was hot?

honestly, if I was more industrious, I would try adding a shit-ton of reverb to her voice to see if it could be palatable to gothwave cru

Ari Evan
12 hours ago (edited)
Really niche of you to incorporate such strong Ives-ian influences in your composition. Who knew bi-tonality, microtones and “pop” could go so well together?!

Sarah Brand
Sarah Brand
11 hours ago
Thank you so much!

I think I'm coming around to classic.

Imo we're all sleeping on her other video, the fully fleshed version of 'Fantasy':

https://www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/sarah-brand-fantasy-music-video/

Wow, that's actually kind of cool. I mean, I want there to be more going on in the music but the dissonances are amazing at times, esp the crunchy layered vocal harmonies.

She makes me think a bit of Danielson Famile.

Maybe Adorno is her sociological role model?

Tbc, I have been exposed to one Danielson Famile album many years ago.

this is blowing up at the moment, huh

honestly, if I was more industrious, I would try adding a shit-ton of reverb to her voice to see if it could be palatable to gothwave cru

― sarahell, Saturday, July 24, 2021 7:15 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Given it a go - results are uh well...

https://soundcloud.com/james-errington-769931947/red-dress-fukd-up

reminds me much more of a maybe-accidental, maybe-avant-garde vibe of Farah Abraham much more than Rebecca Black

i'm getting a slight whiff of "Space Oddity" in there

yeah I was think "Can't Find My Way Home" by Blind Faith

I subscribed to her Vevo; she only has a few hundred subscribers. (How does an aspiring artist get a Vevo acct, can anyone do it?)

(or is she an “industry plant,” lol)

Also reminds me of this, which I think I found out about bc of a rushomancy post: http://musicweird.blogspot.com/2018/05/sick-sound-craze-for-amateur-girl.html

her place is assured on the Oxbridge Outsiders album that Numero puts out in 2034

I think anyone can start a Vevo account

xxp Kathy Young is awesome, fwiw (I have her comp CD)

https://soundcloud.com/james-errington-769931947/red-dress-fukd-up

― A viking of frowns, (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, July 24, 2021 2:38 PM (yesterday)

definitely moanwave adjacent! well done!

Everett True stans for Brand …. and Brand replies!

https://everetttest.wordpress.com/2021/07/22/sixty-for-60-27-sarah-brand/

lol this is awesome.

If the Rebecca Black connection question is directed at me, there's none.

I just thought here was the best place to put it *shrugs*

A lot of people outside of these walls are making a Rebecca Black connection, whether justified or not.

Ah, I see

Rebecca Black was a teenager who sang a banal song written for her by a commercial song factory, with extreme use of digital pitch correction. Sarah Brand is a grad student writing and performing her own songs and directing her own videos, trying to say something about religion and society, with a very unpolished voice to which she chooses not to apply any digital correction.

There's a similar 'cringe' fascination for a lot of online viewers/listeners but it goes no further than that. They're opposites in some ways.

There’s a perception that both are hilariously un-self-aware vanity projects, but yes, Brand is in control and Black wasn’t.

The unanswered question here is whether Brand is knowing or delusional.

Evidence for the former: she's academically gifted, there's serious thought behind the concept, the contrast between the polished and competently produced instrumentation and the untreated raw vocal suggests a conscious aesthetic choice.

Evidence for the latter: there's a preening, self-adoring quality to her performance in the "Red Dress" video which could indicate narcissistic delusion; maybe she comes from money, the participants were paid well, and so nobody was motivated to have a quiet word in her ear.

Yeah, I'm a bit obsessed right now.

I mean, even if she was at some point hearing her own voice and thinking it sounded like Carrie Underwood, she has by now read the many comments on her videos - even True's praise, which she responded to, was predicated on her work being raw, unpolished outsider art.

It's the scope and the relative slickness of the presentation that's the unusual factor. A number of people who can sing no better than this distribute footage of themselves singing a cappella or strumming a guitar, very few spend thousands on a quasi-professional video.

Not sure it would require thousands. From the description of "Fantasy":

Special thanks to Green Templeton College, University of Oxford for the filming location.
Special thanks to the Oxford University Filmmaking Foundation for the use of filming equipment.

(She's a member of both of those.)

The actors look like they're probably fellow students.

It would definitely require a lot of time, work, and production skills, though.

Agree 100% though that the contrast between the voice and the slickness of everything else is the unusual and striking aspect.