The Rise and Fall of Rebecca Black

Rebecca Black is the 14 year old U.S. citizen who achieved overnight fame and derision for her entry to the category of "worst song ever", an ode to partying and looking forward to the weekend called Friday.  She recently released her new single, My Moment.  As a song, it's mediocre; there have been far-better and yet-worse pop singles through the ages.  As an examination of Western civilization's obsession with fame and personal glory, it's disturbingly blunt.  You can watch it here (opens in same window, unfortunately):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OxWD85Ngz4

Let's break it down.  Rebecca sings to an unknown antagonist:

Were you the one who said that I would be nothing?
Well, I'm about to prove you wrong
I'm not the only one who believes in something
My one wish is about to come true

Whoever she is singing to apparently said that she would be nothing, and with this song she will prove them wrong.  If we take this invisible antagonist to represent those of us who disparaged Friday, it is a sad indictment on us if we ever equated the worth of that first single with the totality of her worth as a human being.  Conversely, it is a sad insight into her philosophy (and that of her managers) if they take criticism of Friday to equate to a complete devaluing of her as a person.  In fairness to her, I don't doubt that many of the comments made about Friday on Youtube were personal, hurtful and even shameful.  But fame is a double-edged sword, and when it is your "one wish", as the lyrics state, you must take the better with the bitter.

The lyrics continue:

I'm not stopping for you
No matter what you do
I'll just keep on dreaming
My head up in the clouds when nobody is around to see...

We'll come back to this.  Onwards:

This is my moment, my moment
It's my time, flying high, lime, mine
Feels like my moment, my moment
I've waited for so long
But now everybody knows this is my moment, my moment

The images in the video clip tell the story: Rebecca in the studio, Rebecca stepping out of a limo to greet a throng of adoring fans (all camera phones held high), Rebecca at the photoshoot, Rebecca on the red carpet, Rebecca driving through Beverley Hills and reading articles about herself.  She rushes into the headlights of fame and celebrity with the same enthusiasm that many 14 year old boys rushed into the trenches of the First World War.  The passion of youth can be dangerous.

There's something perverse about a 14 year old girl singing "I've waited for so long, but now everybody knows this is my moment".  How old was she when she first set her sights on this glory?  Eleven?  Twelve?  Two or three years is not a long time to wait.  Five or six years, neither.  Fourteen years, perhaps, could be considered a long time, but that would imply that Rebecca has been groomed solely for pop-chart success since birth, which is ridiculous.  I sincerely hope it's ridiculous.

Rebecca now switches her attention from the unseen antagonist to the unseen cheer squad (this is presuming that the kids who appear in the film clips are not actual fans but have been paid to do it, or at least are doing it because they want to be on Youtube):

You knew it all along, I was afraid of you
I thought I couldn't be myself
You tried to be my friend
But I wouldn't let you
Remember what you said
Don't miss out on your chance
Your life is in your hands
So take it just as far as you can
But trusting in youself, forget everyone else
Believe...

It's a common sentiment, and Miss Black is certainly not alone in expressing self-determinism.  That doesn't make it right.  Strip away the candy-cane tune and the happy smiling people on the screen and you're left with a cold, blind methodology for ruin.  Your life is in your hands!  Trust in yourself!  Forget everyone else!  The lyrics unwittingly reveal that this approach is lacking.  If your life is in your hands, but you can only take it "just as far as you can", the question is, "how far is that?"  There must be a point beyond which your life is not in your hands, a point at which other forces impact on you.  Later in the song (I won't bother posting it here), Rebecca disparages all her "haters" and bids them adieu.  She had better ask if this is wise: the most watched non-parody version of Friday on Youtube has about 7000 "likes" against 34,000 dislikes.  The moment that all these "haters" decide to ignore her, the fame she craves will be reduced to a barely audible round of applause.

Note also that the call to trust in one's self is coupled with a call to forget everyone else.  Again, the lyrics reveal the flaw.  She is told, and she tells us, that we must trust in ourselves to the exclusion of others.  The only way any person can be their own god is if there are vast seas of others who are not.  Rebecca Black can only be raised high if the masses, the "everyone else" of the lyrics, are lowered, forgotten.  This brings me back to the earlier lyric:

My head up in the clouds when nobody is around to see...  

If Rebecca Black truly seeks and truly receives the gift she asks for, she will find herself truly alone.  Self-worship works on a law of diminishing returns.  The higher that Miss Black rises in the stratosphere, the lonelier she will be and the thinner the air.  All alone with no person or god to love but thine own self: it's the definition of hell.

And hell is something we all seek to avoid, either through the belief that it does not exist, or through committing enough acts of goodness to somehow tip the balance in our favour, or - as in my case, the Christian view - belief in a good God who does not want me to fall into the self-destructive spiral of self- idolatry that leads there, and who has gone to great lengths to stop me going there.

An Open Letter to the Masterchef Orchestra

Dear Masterchef Orchestra,

Let me introduce myself.  My name is Phil, and I've come to the Masterchef phenomenon late in the game.  This is the first season I've watched with any consistency.  I look forward to the Monday night elimination after a hard day's work.  I guess I kind of see it as a reward, a treat of sorts, a way to relax.  There's something enjoyable about watching other people under intense pressure, which is why I also like "Iron Chef" and any show about deep sea diving.  And I'd like to offer a word of encouragement to you, as we move towards the business end of the season.  You see, I'm pretty sure some people have made nasty comments about your constant, insistent, some might say bullish, intrusive and infuriatingly annoying contribution to the show.  Some might say that the way in which you underscore the entire program is unnecessary.  Some might say that your 100% synthetic instrument list (or "lyst" to the Beowulf generation) sounds like a blunt chisel being drilled by an iron-ore bore into the skull of an incredibly resilient chihuahua.  Some might say that your tendency to modulate from a heart-pumping "your life is over" minor key to a popsicle-rainbow "your life is beautiful; I affirm you"  major key at the very moment that the judge stops with the negativity and starts saying what's good about the contestant's dish is either psychotic and indicative of a severely split personality, or a horribly dumbed-down use of musical motif, a dictatorial approach to the lowest-common-denominator of those viewers who are not able to glean, from the expressions of disgust on the judges' faces or the tears streaming down the contestants' cheeks, how they should feel in any given situation.  Some would say you ought to offer your services to the bionic creatures from a Phillip K. Dick novel, those half-human, half-robot creatures who, when confronted with a wilting flower, do not know how to feel, unless some Harrison Ford-like-character can beat them over the head with a bat shouting "Feel bittersweet, dammit!"

But I say, ignore them.  Ignore anyone who makes such hurtful, hateful comments, say "goodnight" and play yourself a tuneful lullaby, to send you off to a sweet, peaceful ad break.  Don't forget the flame-grilled taiko drumbeat.

On a completely different topic, here are two unrelated music clips I've watched in the last couple of days.  See if you can see how they're related.
The Scientist
Chasing Pavements

Love Never Dies: - in defence of Andrew Lloyd Webber

Last Friday night, May 27th, at approximately 8pm, I was very excited.  Jen and I were sitting in the centre of Row AAA, the very front row of the Regent Theatre in Melbourne, to see the final preview performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest offering, Love Never Dies.  I was wrapt.  My palms were sweaty, I wriggled around in my seat, my pulse raced and my eyes darted around the auditorium in eager expectation. 

This may or may not make sense to you, depending on how long you've known me.  See, for the last ten years or so, my heart, music-theatre-wise, has well and truly belonged to the school of Sondheim, and his pupils, Guettel, Ricky Ian Gordon, Josh Schmidt et al (but not very many 'al', I'm sorry to say).  These guys write deeply moving works of music theatre in which song, lyric and book are seamlessly integrated.  They write profoundly existential works (of course it's not cool enough to be "existential" anymore, one has to be profoundly so).  They write great works of literature, not the synth-bashing melodramas of the '80s that filled lyric theatre stages around the world for the better part of that overblown decade and the one that followed, the epic big-spender shows of Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh, particularly.  I openly scoffed and shook my head and wagged my finger at Lloyd Webber's bombastic Top 40 hits, his choice of increasingly invisible lyricists and his flagrant pilfering of tunes he had already used in his own shows.  I knew, in my head, that it was wrong to love Andrew Lloyd Webber...

...but all the time my head said "no", my heart said "aww, come on, he's not that bad!".  And I found that I harboured a secret desire: in between repeated listenings of Floyd Collins, Sweeney Todd and Assassins came a desire to listen to "Amigos Para Siempre" one more time, to reimagine how I would stage the first 20 minutes of Aspects of Love, to sing High Flying Adored with the same ridiculous faux-Argentinian accent I used at the school music recital in Grade 10. 

You see, I was once a full-blooded Lloyd Webber fan.  The fascination dates to February 14th, 1997, when my parents took the family to see The Phantom of the Opera - first balcony, third row back, stage left - my first experience of professional theatre.  Actually, I think it really began with "The Premiere Collection - Encore" CD, which my grandparents owned and a copy of which I still own today - an anthology of songs from Lloyd Webber shows, not just covers of hits, most notable for its inclusion of Peter Cousens singing "Love Changes Everything", including a fantastic "Why did I go back to see her?" just before the key change.  If you know the show you'll know why that's fantastic, but even if you don't, I hope you can understand that it is this inclusion of "why did I go back to see her?" that stands out in my mind as the place where I really began to get excited about musical theatre.  See, in every other version of the song, you hear "nothing in the world will ever be the same" followed by the key change, but in Cousen's cover, as in the show itself, it's "nothing in the world will ever be the same" followed by "Why did I go back to see her?", followed by the key change and it's just the most brilliant moment because up till then you've just been listening to a nice song about an abstract principle, but suddenly, it gets DRAMATIC!  Suddenly there's another character.  Suddenly we have a need to know - who is she?  What happened the first time he saw her?  Why did he go back?  And we're hooked.  And the music surges and the key changes and we are lifted to new heights of dramatic possibilities. 

That's why I love the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber.  That's why I support Love Never Dies, even though the book contains serious dramaturgical flaws that haven't been rectified since the London production (which is its main problem, incidentally.  It has a fantastic set, some great tunes and some wonderful performances, but the book flails.  For all other niggles and naggles with the show, just refer back to that.  A bad book is the root of all evil in the world of musical theatre.  That's my review of LND right there.  In totality).  That's why, when I'm 80, I'll still be listening to Lloyd Webber's music.  I'll admit it's partly about nostalgia.  I'll admit that Lloyd Webber is a victim of his own success.  But at the end of the day, I like a lot of his music (even if it belonged to Bach or Puccini first), and so do a lot of other people.  What other criteria is there for popular culture?  And must popular culture always be reprehensible?  I think not. 

So there! 

Why Pop Culture is Depressing. Part 1 in a series.

Please note that the title of this blog is "Phil's mostly positive attempts at...".  Appeal to what Lincoln no doubt called the better angles of our nature if you will, but I simply must speak the truth.

One: Regarding The Herald Sun
Those who know me can vouch that I have made no attempt to hide my dislike of Melbourne's favourite tabloid paper over the years.  But my displeasure with The Herald Sun hit a new low on Tuesday morning.  I was riding the tram past a milk bar, out the front of which were displayed those full-page headline sheets for The Age and The Herald Sun, known as Flashboards. 

That says it all, doesn't it?  It appears that we - being the faithful readers of the Herald Sun - are all exclusively selected members of Navy Seal Team 6 who broke into a compound in Abbottabad and shot Osama Bin Laden dead in a brief firefight on Monday morning.  I don't remember any of that happening, but who am I to question the authority of the Herald Sun? 

Or perhaps I'm misinterpreting the text.  Perhaps "we" refers to the editorial staff of the Herald Sun.  This is the more likely interpretation, as I have no evidence to say that said editors were not in Abbottabad at the time of the strike, and I for one would believe they could juggle executing a dangerous commando mission with running a daily rag.   What's more, The Age confirms their involvement...

Just for the record, I didn't take that photo - several others in the vast online ocean have already done it so that I don't have to.  They probably weren't thinking of me when they took the photo, so in a way, that makes it extra special.  

Two: Inane Lyrics
It's a good thing that master lyricist Stephen Sondheim isn't dead yet, because the amount of grave-turning he'd be doing would easily cause several small earthquakes, if he were subjected in his post-mortal-coil state to the lyrics I heard at my local fish and chip shop last night. 

Exhibit A: Number 21 on the Video Hits countdown.  Bruno Mars.  "Grenade". 
"To give me all your love is all I ever asked".  You don't think that's reasonable? 
"I’d catch a grenade for ya" Indeed.
"Throw my hand on a blade for ya" You can't doubt his enthusiasm.

"I’d jump in front of a train for ya"  That does sound rough, I'll agree.  What did you do to him?   
"I would go through all this pain"   And so must we, it seems.
"Take a bullet straight through my brain"  Well, you've spoiled the surprise now.  Alright, I'll put down my gun.

"Yes, I would die for ya baby;
But you won't do the same".  Listen, girlfriend of Bruno Mars, I don't care how much money he offers you, you've made the right choice.  Run.  Run and don't look back.  He's hauling a piano!  

Exhibit B: A lower number than 21 on the Video Hits countdown.  Selena Gomez.  "Who Says?"



"Who says
Who says you’re not perfect
Who says you’re not worth it
Who says you’re the only one that’s hurting
Trust me
That’s the price of beauty
Who says you’re not pretty
Who says you’re not beautiful
Who says
Who says you’re not star potential
Who says you’re not presidential
Who says you can’t be in movies
Listen to me, listen to me
Who says you don’t pass the test
Who says you can’t be the best
Who said, who said
Won’t you tell me who said that?"

... I did.