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

fyi I feel terrible about that joke

But she says "gotta catch my bus I see my friends" not "gotta catch the convertible car I see my friends"

This is important.

It's HER bus. For all we know it's a minivan

DRAMA
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/exclusive-rebecca-black-fighting-ark-music-factory-over-friday-20110401

It didn't take long for everyone involved in the Rebecca Black story to start squabbling. Black – whose song "Friday" hit Number 38 on Billboard's digital singles chart this week – and her mother, Georgina Marquez Kelly, are accusing Ark Music Factory, which produced "Friday," of copyright infringement and unlawful exploitation of publicity rights.

A March 29 letter from Black and Marquez Kelly's lawyer Brian Schall to Ark Music Factory obtained by Rolling Stone alleges that Ark has failed to provide Black with the master recordings of her song and video; has been exploiting her likeness and her song on YouTube, iTunes, Amazon and Ark's website; created an unauthorized "Friday" ringtone; and has been advertising Black as an exclusive Ark recording artist on its website.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Ark Music Factory founder Patrice Wilson denied most of the allegations in the letter. "I have met with Rebecca Black's mom and everything is fine," he said. "She will get the masters and the song. They can have it all."

Marquez Kelly paid Ark $4,000 (not $2,000, as has been widely reported) to produce the song, and according to Schall's letter, the agreement that she signed with Ark in November stipulates that Black has 100 percent ownership and control of "Friday," including the master recording and the music video.

Black shot the video for "Friday" in January, and the Ark team finished it a few weeks later. It was uploaded to YouTube on February 10th, but it only had around 4,000 views until it was posted on comedian Daniel Tosh's Tosh.O Comedy Central blog on March 11th, and comedian Michael J. Nelson tweeted about it. Overnight, it had gotten over 200,000 views, and by March 15th, it had over five million views on YouTube. And after her Good Morning America appearance on March 18th, she had evolved from a meme to a celebrity.

"She's not our exclusive artist," said Wilson. "Once an artist meets with us and once they blow up, they have a choice to retain us or move on if they can. Rebecca is now signed with someone else." Wilson added that he will remove Black from the Ark Music Factory website.

But Ark's lawyer, Barry Rothman, cast doubt on the validity of the November agreement. "The agreement was not court-approved," Rothman said. "They say they own the composition. Nothing could be further from the truth. If they go forward and license it or attempt to copyright it in their name, that would be copyright infringement and we'd act accordingly under the circumstances."

He added: "We're not prepared to engage them in producing documents just because they want them, without a court order or litigation. We'd like to see Rebecca Black's career go forward and we're trying to accomplish that in the context of working through the legalities."

Wilson's Ark Music Factory partner Clarence Jey contended that Ark did act as a record label for Black, and distributed and promoted her with her mother's consent – until it became clear that Black was going to make actual money.

"Now they are turning it around and saying they were exploited, but clearly that is not the case when they were thanking me for forwarding them all the interviews with Rebecca and all the positive comments from YouTube," said Jey. "I was calling Australia on my cell phone pretending to be Rebecca's agent and setting up radio interviews for Rebecca while Georgina was right next to me. If she thought I was exploiting this, she could have said it."

"Georgina's trying to get the rights to things she doesn't have the rights to," said Ark Creative Director Barry Wayne.

Neither Marquez Kelly nor Schall returned calls for comment.

Black is the first real success to come out of the Los Angeles-based Ark, whose website was registered in August 2010 by Wilson. Ark's biggest successes other than Black are the singer Alana Lee Hamilton's "Butterflies," which has close to six million YouTube views, and Kaya Rosenthal's "Can't Get You Out of My Mind," which has 1.7 million YouTube views.

"Suddenly, everyone is seeing big dollars and everyone is getting greedy and it sucks," said Jey, who claims that his team wrote the music and lyrics to "Friday." "My team just needs to be looked after to some extent. They need to be compensated for something." He argued that Black should own the master recording for her vocals, but that Ark should have copyright for the song and composition. "We gave Rebecca 10 percent of the publishing, but she didn't even write a lyric. Good Morning America came over, I paid $400 for the make up artist and no one even thanked me for that."

And now it seems as though Ark's success may be its undoing. Wilson recently hired his own lawyer, and Jey alleges that Wilson won't give him access to the website. "Yesterday we were supposed to have a meeting at my attorney's place. I didn't hear from him all day. He sent me a text message late at night saying, 'Sorry, brother, I've had a busy day.' In the meantime he's going around saying I'm not with Ark."

now that's the American way

But she says "gotta catch my bus I see my friends" not "gotta catch the convertible car I see my friends"

This is important.

― billstevejim, Friday, April 1, 2011 2:22 PM (36 minutes ago)

I figured she meant to catch the bus, but her friends intercepted her, and now she has a front seat back seat decision to make.

I was wondering when the lawsuits would finally start happening.

But she says "gotta catch my bus I see my friends" not "gotta catch the convertible car I see my friends"

Clearly you haven't been paying attention, because you'd note that Rebecca sees her FRANS, not her "friends".

is it wrong that I have almost convinced myself that "Kickin" and "Sittin" are her friend's nicknames

as in "Kickin' Fran" and "Sittin' Fran"

had no idea Mike Nelson's Twitter was one of the tipping points of the video taking off!

I thought it was "awkward hand flapping FRAN".

I know I always stood inside of convertibles on my way to school Friday mornings. She probably said bus initially because she doesn't want to disappoint herself if she expects her underage driving friends to pick her up and they don't come this Friday. She'll say "nah, they aren't coming this time... gotta catch the bus" because she has some self esteem issues and yeah, deep down she is expecting them, but she wants to trick herself and get an ego boost, because omg lol her friends care about her and she never expected them to actually come. They even saved two seats for her! Two! She then feels like she can let herself have some fun fun fun fun, after a long sleepless night of worry.

funny how Pato comes across in that Rolling Stone piece as the only Ark dude who has a soul.

they're already starting to take down Rebecca Black content from their website. shit suddenly got real.

it'll be hilarious if there are years of vicious lawsuits over who takes credit for the creation of this heinous song everyone hates

Waitin' at the bus stop
I see my fraaaans
Suin' in the front seat
Lawyers in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Should I go to coooooooourt?

this heinous song everyone hates

that charted on Billboard

i know people DO kind of like it now (including me!) and have bought it on iTunes and stuff. but that doesn't change the fact that it's objectively terrible and that's the whole reason it's famous.

kinda like Mambo No. 5?

or Who Let the Dogs Out?

the only novel thing about this isn't that it's terrible (looooooong history of terribly made garbage hitting the charts) it's how it got there - the pay-to-play scheme, the internet marketing etc

I would argue that both "Mambo #5" and "Who Let the Dogs Out" are much, much better than "Friday", not least because they seem to have been written by people who understood English sentence construction and they were not sung by the human equivalent of yippy pug.

okay how about the Thong Song

I said it already but will repeat: Friday is not only not a good song, it's not even bad enough to be interesting. It's bland and meh and I can totally believe it originated on Tosh (though i don't think that's right?); it's just earwormy.

Shakey, try picking a song that is actually dislikable

haha um okay what was Ashley Simpson's biggest hit

i would say:
Thong Song > Mambo No. 5 > Friday > Who Let the Dogs Out

Some legal weirdness in that article -- (1) it's not really a contentious point of copyright law that owning the master is not the same thing as owning the composition so what's the dispute surrounding that? Is it unclear who actually wrote the song? OTOH (2) the ark lawyer's statement that the agreement is "not court-approved" is perplexing -- recording contracts need court approval?

It's also all very funny, since it's the rare case where the artist really owes most of her success to the record label/producers and yet it's the record label who got screwed by the contract.

"Pieces of Me" was Ashlee's biggest hit, and that wasn't as bad as some of her other songs ("La La" was completely unbearable, for example)

not nearly as good as thong song

few songs considered novelty or one-hit-wonders are as good as "The Thong Song"

like, I have to start pulling out super-sentimental/important-to-me-and-me-alone shit like "Let's Go All The Way" and "I Wanna Be A Cowboy"

PICK THE BEST SONG: "Friday" vs. "Mambo No. 5" vs. "Who Let the Dogs Out" vs. "Thong Song" vs. "Pieces of Me"

^ only one fair way to settle this, imo

oh it probably doesn't count but "Calabria" is full on bad-ass

http://www.funnyordie.com/rebecca_black

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti1D9t8n0qA

the only novel thing about this isn't that it's terrible (looooooong history of terribly made garbage hitting the charts) it's how it got there - the pay-to-play scheme, the internet marketing etc

― in my world of loose geirs (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, April 1, 2011 3:54 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark

what 'pay-to-play scheme'? i mean the whole Ark thing is a little unusual but a singer paying people to write/produce material for them is not in an of itself novel.

I suppose that's true, it's more the nature of this particular ARK outfit, catering to vanity projects of the idle rich etc.

catering to vanity projects of the idle rich

similaries to so many major-label artists it's ridiculous but we may not wanna start...

lol yeah you guys are right I guess - I'm not sure what differentiates this from, say, that song by Will Smith's kid, for example

paris hilton! lindsey lohan! etc etc.

they were all famous before they made records, for one

also people actually unironically like "Whip My Hair"

When Black's "Friday" comes
I'll stand down by the door
And catch ILXors when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor

I finally watched/listened to "Friday" for the first time.
I can't believe a dude did all that work to make "Friday (In Hell)".
Okay, I'm done with this thread. 8 minutes is enough.

she's from Jersey right?

the miracle of "Friday" is that it possesses all the qualities that rockists like to complain about and popists like to defend ― gratuitous autotune, a singer who didn't spend years practicing and suffering before she rose to fame, brainless assembly-line songwriting, an inherent joylessness, etc. ― but it takes those qualities to such ridiculous extremes that even the most ardent popists can poke fun it without feeling guilty of betraying their values. and even though it's a vanity project, it's a reasonable imitation of a major label pop production, and therefore people can use it as a stand-in for all the pop music that they inwardly despite but are afraid to condemn for fear of outing themselves as rockist indie snobs.

(tbf when I call the song ridiculous, I don't necc. mean it's bad. I actually kinda like it...)

When Black's "Friday" comes
I'll stand down by the door
And catch ILXors when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor

― The Louvin Spoonful (WmC), Friday, April 1, 2011 5:05 PM Bookmark

When Rebecca Black's Friday comes
I'll stand down by the door
And catch the listeners when they dive from the fourteenth floor

― for real molars who ain't got no fillings (Hurting 2), Monday, March 14, 2011 4:32 PM Bookmark

whoops, sorry