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

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.

But I mean lol that slicked-up expensive pop music is otherwise the preserve of those with elite vocal technique.

Do you think that there are well-known singers who would sound this pitchy without autotune?

Someone has pitch-corrected the vocals (starts at 1:05).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6ERPeGkBt8

Well, there are a lot of (mostly male) singers like Lou Reed and Bernard Sumner whose pitch doesn't sound much better than this to me but have made a distinctive aesthetic of it. (Taylor Swift ca 2007 wasn't quite at this level but was, uh, less distant than one might think.) But no my point was not that most pop/country singers sound like this, just that if what I want to listen to is great singing, that's often not what I would put on anyway.xp

There's also a "microtonal transcription".

This is notated in 48-tone equal temperament, using quarter tone accidentals as well as arrows to indicate 25 cents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JVphem5IWE

Come on, Sumner and even Reed have a vastly better command of pitch than Brand. Neither of them is a great singer - from a technical perspective - and yes, they turned that into an aesthetic. But Sumner (and Reed, in his younger days) can actually carry a tune.

I wonder if both cultural norms, and the fact that higher-pitched voices have more prominence to the ear, conspire to make this more of an issue for female singers. I'm not sure that Ian Curtis on a bad day would have sung any better than this.

...but because he's down in a baritone range (and maybe due to Hannett's production), his voice recedes into the instruments.

well I mean part of it tho is this type of singing placed in a nominally. (if weirdly skewed) wanna be professional modern pop context in which singers can generally....sing or are at least pitch corrected

if she was in some indie post punk band no one would bat an eyelash

I wonder if both cultural norms, and the fact that higher-pitched voices have more prominence to the ear, conspire to make this more of an issue for female singers

yes. and see also genre -- listen to Camaraderie's reverb version --

this sounds more like the average karaoke rendition of a song than anything to me.

my ex sang like this

key hint is how she sometimes does wind up in key through pure chance.

this sounds more like the average karaoke rendition of a song than anything to me.

yeah, where the person is singing at/near the top of her range (or psychologically induced range), as opposed to nearer the middle where the singer will feel more confident/comfortable to sing a wider range of notes

Would be totally willing to read and compare microtonal transcriptions:

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyyrqCC5vw0

xps

like this was the main aesthetic similarity between this and Rebecca Black -- the one note-ness -- though Brand's voice is capable of more overtones and expressiveness so she sings variants (or microtones as you will) of the same one.

Sorry, first link was meant to start at 12:15, second at 4:34.xp

yeah, where the person is singing at/near the top of her range (or psychologically induced range), as opposed to nearer the middle where the singer will feel more confident/comfortable to sing a wider range of notes

― sarahell, Sunday, July 25, 2021 2:20 PM bookmarkflaglink

yeah with my ex it was always Celine Dion, when she should have been singing alto-y country.

Ozzy sounded way worse than Brand on his last two tours w/ Sabbath btw. like...way....way....worse.

do you miss her?

almost like "I'm used to this song in its former key but the band lowered the key to help me, but i'm still singing it in the original key" bad

xpost I don't miss the Celine Dion

Scott Weiland was having a lot of trouble when I saw him play a few months before his death, he was missing notes that weren't even especially high in his range.

I would definitely rather listen to Sarah Brand than Ian Brown, the worst live singer I've ever seen by some considerable distance.

(because graceful self-delusion, if that's what it is, will forever trump graceless misplaced arrogance)

people are taking this seriously huh

just wait for the EOYs