Rebecca Black Shoots For A Comeback, Auditioning On Fox’s ‘The Four’
Rebecca Black just wants to be taken seriously as a musician. That’s not going to be easy, considering that she became an unwitting laughingstock via a viral video of one of the worst songs in recorded history (more on that later). But this week, Black took a shot at redemption by appearing on Fox’s The Four.
As Yahoo News reports, Rebecca, now 20 and putting the ugliness that was 2010’s “Friday” behind her, took a shot at redemption by auditioning for Season 2. Even before belting out her first note, she was met with a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism.
Self-described “fangirl” Meghan Trainor, for example, called Rebecca a “goddess.”
“I feel like you overcame the ultimate cyberbullying, and now you’re just, like, this beautiful goddess out here.”
Judge Diddy, however, almost anticipated that Rebecca would fail.
“Muhammad Ali said, ‘Knock me down seven times, I’ll get up eight.’ … Don’t never stop, don’t never stop.”
So how did she do? Not bad, but not great, as it turns out.
She started with NSync’s “Bye Bye Bye,” dedicating it to all of those haters who have bedeviled her since she was an adolescent. Yahoo Music writer Lyndsey Parker describes her rendition as “competent,” but notes that Rebecca’s vocal range is “limited.” See for yourself.
https://youtu.be/coEaFR2FeNA
Unfortunately for Rebecca, her second song, Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn,” was described as “tepid” and “tentative,” and she was up against stiff competition with James Graham’s version of Donny Hathaway’s “A Song for You.” In the end, the audience went with James.
Done with you guys sleeping on Rebecca Black. D.o.n.e. pic.twitter.com/9NwLL9rLdv
— Kelsey (@KelseyDelave) June 4, 2018
Even though she didn’t make it very far, Black achieved what she set out to do: namely, to be taken seriously as a musician.
“I’d felt like there was a 13-year-old little girl stuck, so trapped, for so long, thinking that no one else would ever be able to look at her differently.”
That 13-year-old girl was the butt of an international joke back in 2011 when her parents paid $4,000 for an L.A. studio to help her record a video. Auto-tuned beyond all reason and sanity, with cheesy lyrics that seemed like they could have been written by a cheap lyric-writing computer program, “Friday” became a smash hit for all the wrong reasons. And the young lady behind the video became the victim of bullying, both of the cyber variety and of the in-person variety. She wound up dropping out of high school and completing her classes online.
These days Rebecca is living in L.A. and still trying to make it as a singer-songwriter, according to The Orange County Register.
