The Pop Corporation

When we think of great pop comebacks, we think of artists who have been away for a little while, only for them to hit us with an absolute banger. However, that isn’t really a comeback – it’s more a continuation after a pause, right?

Of course, there’s artists who fall-off, to eventually comeback with a big hit, but that’s more of a ‘return to form’, which feels slightly different. Still, when someone overcomes the odds to land blows on the pop consciousness, it’s always hugely satisfying to see. It adds a bit of spice to the releases, which is always good for the culture.

So with that, who has had a better comeback than Rebecca Black?

If you think of a comeback more in the vein of some kind of retribution, where an artist has been through the mire, only to reemerge with a career renewed, then surely Black is one of the most rewarding success stories we’ve seen in pop history?

Her first moments in the public eye were to be completely vilified. She was 13 years old when she, for funsies, recorded ‘Friday’ which became a viral sensation, with everyone and their uncle piling in on it to say it was just about the worst thing they’d ever heard. Was it a classic? No. Did a 13 year old girl deserve such round mockery? Absolutely not.

‘Friday’ was a song that was like a number of other songs that appeared online at the time, with some youngster getting some quick recording time in exchange for money – a glorified version of the American mall photoshoot if you like – and Black had seen a schoolmate do something similar, and her parents coughed up the money to ARK Music Factory so she could make a silly little song and a video to go with it.

It prompted parodies, stand-ups including it in their routines, and boring-ass music critics taking it all far too seriously and dubbing it the worst song like ever, and all that. Rebecca Black, just trying to have a bit of fun, became a laughing stock.

Smelling blood or an opportunity, Simon Cowell chimed in on the whole thing, saying: “any song to do with the weekend annoys you. It reminds me of ‘Saturday Night’… It’s what we call a ‘hair-dryer song,’ a song girls sing into their hair dryers as they’re getting ready to go out. But the fact that it’s making people so angry is brilliant.” He continued that she shouldn’t “listen to anyone over the age of 18. I’m being deadly serious. Whatever she’s done has worked. Whether you like her or not, she’s the most talked-about artist in America right now. Nobody over the age of 18 should understand her or like her. So she should just do it her way.”

Such was the size of the reception, it soon ran into legal troubles. Who owned the masters? Who should be getting a cut of the inevitable ringtones that were being bought at the time? Again, a teenager at the middle of this whole maelstrom. It was preposterous and indicative of the time when the internet was still the Wild West, and anyone who fell into everyone’s crosshairs were simply fair game. It was almost akin to a musical equivalent of Revenge Porn.

The whole thing was brutal.

And yet, Black began to scratch a living out of the song, appearing as a spokesperson for someone who had become a meme, seeing the song appear on TV show ‘Glee’, and appearing in a Katy Perry video, ‘Last Friday Night’. There were some more releases, but the comeback really happened when Rebecca Black leaned into the person she really was – a camp, hyperpop tour de force.

By 2021, she’d reemerged with a ‘Friday’ remix, produced by Dylan Brady of 100 gecs and featuring 3OH!3, Big Freedia and Dorian Electra, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the original release, and followed it up with an EP, ‘Rebecca Black Was Here’, featuring Black in a middle-America wig, with goo drooling out of a blank grin. This was not the same girl everyone mocked a decade prior.

By the time the debut album saw release – ‘Let It Burn’ – she was now throwing down the gauntlet with hyperactive electropop, and soon enough, the hipster critics were falling over themselves to say how much they loved this stuff! Catching the wave of retribution from those maimed by online discourse (see also, the ‘Free Britney’ movement), Black was starring in a Boiler Room DJ set and opening for K Pop titans Blackpink. The theys, gays and everyone embraced Rebecca’s new moves, her presence and the juggernaut pop she was releasing, and to come full circle, away from impressive headline slots, she gets to perform in stadiums as the support for Katy Perry who, ironically, seems to be going through a similar deluge of slings and arrows that Black endured at the start of her career.

From being dismissed as some spoiled kid who had money thrown at her for a daft song, Black found herself coming out. Talking to the NME, she said: “I don’t know how I’m gonna say this without sounding like a twat, but gay is a way of life. Gay is an energy that’s so much bigger than how people have used it [negatively]. If you want to get down to specifics, I am queer, I am bi, I am pan – I am all of those… but I am also gay.”

In an essay, she’s said: “When ‘Friday’ went up on the internet, it went crazy — and the onslaught of negative attention I received was so sudden and so intense that I wasn’t sure I would survive.”

She was someone who people tried to define by something they did when they were younger, but somehow – incredibly – she managed to navigate some of the vilest abuse a young woman can endure, and emerge as one of the most vibrant popstars of her generation with a caring, progressive and supportive fanbase where she can do as she artistically pleases, and play stadium shows at the same time.

Talking to NPR, she said: “Maybe this moment took so long to get to. I wanted to show people that I deserve to not just be some sort of a redemption, or a comeback story. This album is just as good as everything else that’s out there right now. This album can compete. And I as a performer can compete with all the other pop stars that are in this realm. That was really important for me. I feel that way about myself and where I’m at now. And whether or not other people agree or disagree will be up to them.”

Rebecca Black is unbreakable, try as some people might.