Keep your pencils handy

You may want to use them to puncture your eardrums during parts of this ABC News clip.

It’s a report on the viral phenomenon known as Rebecca Black’s song “Friday” and how people think it may be the worst song ever. I’m not cruel enough to post a link to the actual video—you’ll have to subject yourself to that. Maybe you’ll like it, maybe you won’t, but I can pretty much guarantee you’ll never hear the word “Friday” in your head the same way again.

The biggest reason I found the news report interesting is because during the interview, they asked her to sing the first part of the National Anthem. It wasn’t great—she wasn’t always on-key—but at least she got all the words right. (I’m looking at you, Christina Aguilera!)

And when she was singing the anthem, it didn’t feel like she was scraping her vocal fingernails across a chalkboard. I cringed a little when she hit the wrong notes, but I didn’t have to stop partway through the song. (Seriously, I’ve tried watching “Friday” a couple times and I still have no idea how it ends.)

You may be asking yourself, “Why should I care?” Well, there’s really no good reason to care, but I think it’s odd that she intentionally sounds bad. Her voice was fine during the news report, but that grating, nasal tone in the song/video… why?

Did someone convince her to do it because everyone loves a train wreck? Is that going to be her “trademark” that no one will want to copy? Or maybe she just wants to set herself apart from Christina Aguilera. I don’t know, but I recommend you keep a couple pencils nearby for when the inevitable happens: she releases an album.

[She seemed nice during the interview and I don’t want to be a total hater, but I came up with a joke that some of you might like: “Let’s hope the release date is scheduled for 2013 and that the Mayans were right.”]