BREAKING NEWS: Friday is the day after Thursday; the day after that is Saturday, and Sunday comes afterwards. Thanks to ARK Music Factory newcomer, 13-year-old Rebecca Black and her debut single, “Friday.” This is now (once again) common knowledge. Just last week, the song and video became an instant viral hit thanks to a blog post by Comedy Central star Daniel Tosh. In a matter of days, the video earned millions of hits on YouTube, “Rebecca Black” became a trending topic on Twitter, and when the song was released on iTunes, it rapidly shot up their downloads chart. Rebecca even found herself on national television with a feature on Good Morning America.

So what about this song actually drew so much attention? Well, for starters, it’s hilariously terrible. The lyrics are horrendous, the vocals are auto-tuned (yet still awful), and the random rap in the middle is…beyond words. Regardless of who sang the song, there’re no redeeming qualities, but put in the context of a 13-year-old, who is supposedly going to parties and “cruising down the highway,” the whole concept becomes even more ridiculous. There’s honestly nothing redeeming about this song, musically, lyrically, or conceptually. Not even a verse by famous rapper Patrice Wilson (oh wait…) could salvage the song.

One would think that regardless of how bad a song is the video couldn’t possibly be worse. Wrong! Even with the audio on mute, the video is excruciatingly terrible. First of all, 13-year-olds should not be driving, especially without seatbelts, or going to big house parties. Let’s not forget the fact that Patrice Wilson, clearly a man in his late-20’s or 30’s, is seemingly driving to this same party that a bunch of tweens are throwing. Pretty much any video that spells out every line of the song is doomed to be awful, but this is just on a whole other level. However, as bad as the song and video are, they are both extremely hysterical. So much so, in fact, that for a while no-one even knew if this was a joke! It really isn’t a surprise that this became such a popular hit so quickly.

As justified as the bad reactions were, poor Rebecca Black experiences more criticism than any 13-year-old should ever have to endure. These included death threats and comments about how she should cut herself and have an eating disorder so she’ll look pretty. With all of the recent suicides as a result of bullying, I really need to go on record here and say that comments like these are appalling. Cyber bullying like this is just as serious as doing it in person, especially when there are so many comments coming from all over the world to a girl who was catapulted into superstardom. Luckily, Rebecca seems to have a good head on her shoulders and has said she is rising above the criticisms. It has been said that she is not the best singer in the world, nor the worst, and this is something I’d have to agree with. The song is awful, the video is worse, but this shouldn’t all fall on Rebecca’s shoulders. She didn’t write or produce the song or direct the video, and she’s only 13 after all.

I think “Friday” is an epically terrible piece of music that will probably go down in history as being one of the worst songs ever, but hopefully Rebecca will come into her own and move on from this unwanted form of stardom in time.