By Danielle Austin
One day, while browsing around on PerezHilton, I came across a video post titled“Rebecca Black Hits Top 100 On iTunes!” From the description I thought it might be a relatively good weekend anthem so I gave it a listen. Yeah … it came nowhere close to being even a decent song. However, the fact that she was only 13 made the terrible lyrics in the song a little bit more understandable. The thing that puzzled me the most wasn’t why the hell does this video have 105,802,466 views or why would someone ever repeat the words “we so excited” over and over again, or even why 13 year olds are now driving to school, but the thing that really left me baffled: What record company would want to produce a song like this? Then, I came across the Ark Music Factory website and it all made sense.
As I navigated around the website, I couldn’t help but notice that all the artists on the label are ages 10-17 and all girls, with the exception of one middle aged man who for some reason is always creeping in the background of the young artist’s videos. Oh, and they now have a young blond boy who is just as auto-tuned as all the girls. I understand the demand for teen pop sensations like Justin Bieber, but is Ark Music Factory taking it too far? They aren’t even making quality music. They are just finding cute kids that think they can sing then auto-tuning their voices to death and combining it with terrible lyrics and overused, unoriginal beats. The attention and “fame” these kids are getting is certainly not the same as Justin Bieber. They are getting press for being talentless and exploited while he is getting press for having number one singles and a movie on the big screen that was surprisingly successful.
Once Rebecca Black got her first taste of this “fame” she realized just how mean people can be. The comments on the video were almost all negative and some even pushed the limit saying, “You should cut yourself and get an eating disorder so you’ll look pretty.” While she admits that comments like this used to bother her and make her cry, she has moved on and just ignores them now. She even decided to do an acoustic version of her song to show people that she’s not a terrible singer. However, the reactions were pretty much just as brutal as the auto-tuned disaster.
Although she doesn’t claim to be the most talented artist, she believes that she does in fact have talent. Which leaves me unable to decipher whether she is a spoiled wanna be pop star or a pretty girl Ark Music Factory has taken advantage of, leaving her with no chance to ever prove herself as a serious artist.
