What Happened To Rebecca Black? Here's Where She Is Now
The first decade of the 2000s saw many stars emerge on YouTube as the phenomenon of viral videos began to take hold. But perhaps no one was as famous (and as controversial) as singer Rebecca Black. Nine years after her "big break," fans are wondering: where is she now?
Her Claim To Fame
On February 10, 2011, Los Angeles-based company ARK Music Factory quietly released the debut single and accompanying video on YouTube for a then-unknown 13-year-old girl. This song, "Friday," garnered 4,000 views in the space of about a month before comedians Michael J. Nelson and Daniel Tosh both latched onto the video and shared it on their social media channels.
Thanks to the poor use of autotune over Black's vocals, nonsensical storyline, cheesy green screen usage, and universally hated (yet catchy) lyrics, "Friday" blew up overnight, with many calling it the worst song of all time.
The video garnered nearly 200 million views in the matter of a few months and was, at one point, one of the top 20 most-watched YouTube videos. But on the heels of its popularity also came a lot of hatred; at one point, the video had over 3 million dislikes, making it the most hated video on YouTube. YouTube was also forced to disable the commenting function on the video because the backlash against Black was so extreme.
Eventually, the video was removed from YouTube altogether due to copyright battles with ARK Music Factory. It was re-uploaded about a year later to Black's personal channel, but the total number of combined views is not known.
In the following couple of years, Black released several more singles, but none achieved the same notoriety of "Friday." This led many to wonder: was Black just a one-hit-wonder?
After Friday
In the past few years, Black has quietly been working on her career. After a long hiatus from music, she cracked the Top 25 on Billboard‘s Dance Club Songs chart in 2017 with her single "The Great Divide," a dramatic departure from the autotuned, immature music of her past. Now 22, she has a YouTube channel with 1.46 million subscribers who tune in to hear new music, vlogs about her personal life, and fashion commentary.
Despite her past negative experiences with cyberbullying and trolls, Black still acknowledges the internet as the source of her success, and also of continued strength. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she said, “Whatever you like and you can’t find in your immediate circle at school or in your hometown, there’s a great chance that you’re gonna find it online. There is a home for everybody."
"I’d be lying if I said I was totally over the ‘Friday’ stuff and that it doesn’t affect me. When you’re 13, and you get so many people giving you death threats, telling you that you don’t deserve to live this life, calling you ugly, fat, terrible, the worst person in the world, that will affect you. I just try to give myself a break every now and then, and take some of the pressure off of trying to prove myself to everybody.”
Black is now an advocate for mental health and kindness online, filling her personal site's blog with articles on the subject. Black commemorated the 9th anniversary of the release of "Friday" this week with an emotional Instagram post along the same lines, exposing the depth of hurt that cyber-bullying truly caused her.
She said, "I just wish I could go back and talk to my 13-year-old self who was terribly ashamed of herself and afraid of the world. To my 15-year-old self who felt like she had nobody to talk to about the depression she faced. To my 17-year-old self who would get to school only to get food thrown at her and her friends. To my 19-year-old self who had almost every producer/songwriter tell me they'd never work with me. Hell, to myself a few days ago who felt disgusting when she looked in the mirror!"
"I'm trying to remind myself more and more that every day is a new opportunity to shift your reality and lift your spirit," she added. "You are not defined by any one choice or thing. Time heals and nothing is finite. It's a process that's never too late to begin. And so, here we go!"
And it seems like now may also be the perfect time for Black to begin the process of becoming a full-fledged pop star. In the hours after posting her confessional, the outpouring of support for the singer on Instagram was overwhelming. She followed up with another statement:
"I could have never imagined the response I’ve gotten over the past few days. Thank you for meeting me with honesty about your own stories. What I’m trying to do with being a bit more honest about my experience with mental health and battling depression is hopefully show that no matter what, you can find hope and peace within yourself. I’m 100% still working on it for me, but I’ve come a long way from where I was. There’s never really an endpoint to get to on this kind of journey and that’s okay. Be kind to yourself and others."
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