It’s no secret that adolescence is typically a time of heightened emotions, stress, and insecurity.
Now, just imagine - on top of all this - being scrutinised by not only your peers but what feels like the entire world.
Having your musical aspirations torn to shreds by people you don’t know, keyboard warriors more than twice your age slating your appearance, and in some cases, sending you death threats.
Although it was far from easy, Rebecca Black has long made peace with the fact that she was 2011’s “most disliked teenager on the internet”.
Yes, it really was that long ago.
The catchy song made its mark on pop culture in the same year that the Harry Potter films came to an end, the same year that Kate and Wills said “I do”, and that Kim K filed for divorce from her now-ex-husband after 72 days of marriage.
This month, in fact, marks the 10-year anniversary of ‘Friday’.
And despite the needlessly vicious backlash Rebecca received as a teen, the 23-year-old beauty is anything but bitter.
VT spoke with Rebecca at the end of last year and can confirm that she is level-headed, charming, and has zero qualms about poking fun at herself and her decade-old debut song.
“I was so young! I was 13 so I had no idea at all of who I was or what I was doing,” she recalled. “It all really happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that I was just kind of taking it day by day.”
Through a girl at school, Rebecca had learned about a particular kind of production company that gave kids the opportunity to record their very own song and star in their own music video - all for the hefty price tag of a few thousand dollars.
Rebecca, who always had a soft spot for singing and performing, asked her mum if she could take part. Supportive of her daughter’s aspirations, her mum agreed.
Some weeks after the now-famous music video was posted online, it appeared on the popular blog Tosh.0 under the title, “Songwriting Isn’t For Everyone”.
And that’s when the hate began pouring in. And pouring in. And pouring in.
“I just remember being completely overwhelmed and not knowing what to do with it,” Rebecca said. “I was really too young to understand it so a lot of it has been understood in hindsight.”
For a long time, the online hate had seriously affected the then-schoolgirl’s confidence.
She had revealed in an interview with Good Morning America at the time that one of the nastiest comments she received was:
Warning: graphic language around self-harm and eating disorders:“I hope you cut yourself and I hope you get an eating disorder so you'll look pretty, and I hope you go cut and die.”
When VT asked Rebecca if she feels what she went through allowed her to develop a thicker skin, she responded, “I think there’s a very traditional storyline of somebody going through a lot of adversity and them becoming tougher or them becoming stronger or having a thick skin.”
“I have developed a thicker skin, I guess,” she continued. “But I don’t think that that is what really helped me grow from it. I think it was learning to accept my vulnerability that made me a stronger person.”
In recent years, the California native has been open about how the backlash affected her emotionally.
In an Instagram post that marked the ninth anniversary of ‘Friday’’s release, she recalled the depression she suffered as a teenager - as well as feeling like she had no one to talk to about it.
Explaining what motivated her to share the candid post, Rebecca told VT that she wanted to use the platform she is fortunate to have to discuss the infamously taboo topic of mental health.
“Not everybody is going to go through what I went through - even though these days, it feels like everyone always goes viral all the time!” she said.
“But what is the same are the feelings that you feel during something like that. Most everybody knows rejection, most everybody knows how it feels to feel shut out or like an outcast or like you really f***ed up.
“And those were all of the feelings that led me through the mental health journey that I went through. It wasn’t just going viral.”
What the haters didn’t realise, though, was that Rebecca is far from the vacuous and spoilt girl that she, sadly, was painted out to be.
VT would go as far as to say that she’s actually incredibly hard to dislike.
She has a very warm-hearted aura, she’s charismatic and has even made several TikTok videos poking fun at her 13-year-old self - while assuring her fans that she feels no bad blood towards anyone who mocked her at the time.
“That is definitely part of the way that I was raised - to seek humour in things,” Rebecca said. “I think now it feels so easy to poke fun at it or have a sense of humour at myself and my situation because I don’t feel like I’m constantly trying to run away from it.”
“Whereas there was definitely a period of time where I was trying to do whatever I could to not be seen as the girl who did ‘Friday’,” she added.
Despite an initially hostile start, Rebecca has, over the years, grown a very devoted fanbase, who she says are “incredibly honest” with her about their own personal lives.
And since her fans have been so open and honest with her, she has decided to reciprocate.
Last year, in fact, Rebecca began opening up about her sexuality. Having kept it a mystery in the past, she explained on her friends’ podcast last spring that she had recently come out of a long-term relationship with a woman.
“Once I knew that I felt cemented in who I was, and knew a bit about who I was in that world and my sexuality, I really wanted to be able to talk about it,” she told VT.
“My experience with recognising my own place within the queer community didn’t look the way that I thought that it would. So, for a long time, I denied myself the reality of what I was feeling because it didn’t feel ‘gay enough’.”
“It didn’t feel the way I had seen it represented in movies that I loved or TV shows that I loved or stories that I’d heard. So that’s what made it more important for me to talk about it.”
Now that Rebecca is openly queer, she’s in a better position to explore this part of her identity in her art. In fact, over the last year, she’s been working on new music, which she describes as being “pretty gay” and “honest”.
“I’ve been able to make some of my absolute favourite things that I’ve ever written through Zoom and FaceTime,” Rebecca said, adding that she hopes to release her new music sometime in 2021.
The pop artist says she takes inspiration from “queer people in music who are unafraid.” Over the years, Rebecca herself has learned not to be afraid to put her own stamp on her music.
Fortunately, she is no longer at the mercy of execs in the industry - a far cry from her very first experience as a recording artist...
A decade ago, a barely teenage Rebecca Black was slated for a song she never claimed to have written. At 23, she has more than redeemed herself.
