Friday (song)

"Friday", performed by Rebecca Black, is a pop song which went viral in March of 2011. The song is about a girl celebrating the fact that it's Friday. And eating cereal. And choosing between the front and back seats of her friends' car when there's only a seat in the back open. And listing the days of the week, before some random guy starts rapping about passing a school bus.

We'd say It Makes Sense in Context, but it doesn't.

Originally the obscure product of a Vanity Studio called Ark Music Factory, the song became viral due to its infectious beat, gratuitous abuse of Auto-Tune that isn't enough to hide an insanely nasal singing voice, and amusing lyrics, all Ark Music Factory's own fault.

Not to be confused with the several other things called Friday.

Tropes used in Friday include:

• Aborted Arc: Enforced: Rebecca's quest to catch the bus ends around 2 seconds in, when her friends show up in a car. She later said that there wasn't enough money to rent a bus for the video.
• Actually Pretty Catchy: Although Friday has an infamous reputation for abusing Auto-Tune and having horrible lyrics, a few reviewers have begrudgingly admitted that they found the song actually pretty catchy.
• AcCENT Upon the Wrong SylLABle: Happens with a few words, in particular "Par-tee-ing"
  • "Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereAL"
  • Also: "Tomorrow is Sat-UR-day, and Sunday comes afterWAAAAAARDS"
• Adorkable: The girls dancing either side of Black in the car. Rapper "Pato" Patrice Wilson has more than a touch of it in interviews, since he's clearly trying to help people with ARK Music, despite all the trashing he gets in the media.
• Auto-Tune: extensively.
• A Wild Rapper Appears: Patrice Wilson's bridge that comes out of nowhere.
• Captain Obvious: "Tomorrow is Saturday... And Sunday comes after...wards."
• Colbert Bump: The video went viral after tweets from comedians such as Mike Nelson, followed by a spotlight on Tosh.0.
  • Stephen Colbert himself sang "Friday" on Jimmy Fallon's show after losing a bet.
• Conflicting Loyalty: The back seat, or the front seat? Which seat will she take? Which group of friends will she align herself with? She picks the back seat.
  • Made redundant when you realise that all the front seats are full - the only seat she can actually take is in the back.
• Dancing on a Car
• Dawson Casting: Inverted. The video seems to portray Rebecca as a high schooler, despite the fact that she's thirteen. Let alone her male friend, who appears to be even younger. This did not go unnoticed.
• Days of the Week Song: "Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday, to-day it is Friday, Friday [...] Tomorrow is Saturday, and Sunday comes afterwards..."
• Disproportionate Retribution: OK, the song's moronic. That doesn't really merit a bunch of people on Twitter and YouTube telling Rebecca Black to get an eating disorder and/or kill herself.
• Epileptic Flashing Lights: Happens near the end at the "rave party".
• Follow the Leader:
  • The label that produced it, Ark Music Group, is attempting to find the next Justin Bieber à la YouTube.
  • Also, it has already had a series of covers and dramatic readings, as well as several Shoddy Knockoff Products such as this one.^[1]
• Gag Dub: Bad Lip Reading did a Gag Dub of "Friday" called "Gang Fight" which made it less about fun and more about gang warfare... and chicken.
• In the Style Of:
  • The rap remix.
  • And the Bob Dylan cover.
  • Similarly, The Doors' version.
  • Can't forget the Meat Loaf cover.
  • Done by Rebecca herself with the acoustic version, which is basically "Friday" as an inspirational ballad.
  • The Midnight Beast did an acoustic cover as well. They did it as a straight cover, but called it a parody anyway, because in Stefan's words, "the lyrics are funny enough."
  • This Darker and Edgier take.
  • The "In Hell" Cynical Mass Remix.
  • This redux, with Stephen Colbert's best Johnny Cash impression, Jimmy Fallon on autotune, and generally soaked in What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?. Oh, and Taylor Hicks.
  • The Crash City version.
  • Apparently, Fanny Goldberg sang this in 1932.
  • The orchestral version.
  • The screamo version, as well as the death metal.
  • A contemplative ballad by a guy with a(n epic) mullet.
  • The aptly named EPIC EDITION.
  • The Christopher Walken version.
  • There's also a version that only edited the music video but it's still extremely funny.
  • Amanda Palmer's "Friday, told from the viewpoint of a truck-stop hooker."
  • Katy Perry's cover.
  • Glee's version
  • And, in order to celebrate the Rapture, we present Doomsday !
  • The Chriddof Edition.
  • The Big Al version.
  • Alex Carpenter's cover.
  • Now slowed 5x.
  • The 8-Bit version.
  • That Guy With The Glasses version
  • This acoustic mash-up with Justin Bieber's "Baby".
  • In honor of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, the Harry Potter version
    • A Ravenclaw-specific version.
  • Polka version, first heard in the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Abridged Series "Friendship Is Witchcraft".
  • The obligatory Team Fortress 2 version. Complete with its own Music Video. ^[2]
  • The Slender Man Version
  • Richard Cheese did a cover. FUN. FUN. FFUN. FFUN.
  • Now used in a commercial for Kohl's.
  • MTV Live's Wednesday.
  • YukkuReimu's version.
• Literal Music Video: This one, although the original music video is pretty damn close to a literal music video on its own.
• Missed the Bus: This appears to create the main source of tension in the narrative, before Rebecca's friends arrive in their car.
• Morning Routine: "7am, waking up in the morning/ Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs/ Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal."
• My Friends and Zoidberg: When she says "my friend is by my right," she's sitting between two girls. Sorry, girl on the left.
• Pop: This song is possibly the purest distillation of late '00s/early '10s pop ever created.
• Poe's Law: No less than Rolling Stone opined, "If the video was intended to be a parody of teen pop convention, it would be on par with some of the best SNL Digital Shorts by Lonely Island."
• Random Events Plot: Of the more mundane variety. A daily morning routine followed by missing the bus, getting a ride from her friends, then throwing a party. With a random rapper interrupting to talk about cruising and how a school bus is passing him by.
• Shout-Out: The calendar in the opening has a few references to other songs associated with days of the week, such as "Pleasant Valley Sunday" and "Manic Monday".
• Show, Don't Tell: There is no bowl, cereal or school bus to be found, despite being mentioned.
• Similarly Named Works: With the movie starring Chris Tucker and Ice Cube. The connection HAS been made, of course.
  • And then there are horror fans who couldn't help but put it together with Friday the 13th. It was bound to happen.
• Stealth Parody:
  • According to some.
  • The humor with the comments for this Friday Song parody tends to get lost on quite a lot of people.
• TV Teen
• Wakeup Makeup
• Weird Moon: What is with that moon? It almost doesn't look real. Oh yeah, it's upside down!
  • Mayhap the video was filmed in the southern hemisphere?
• What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: It's FRIDAY!!!
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Her male friends mysteriously disappear from the car and are replaced in a later shot by two females.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: ARK Music Factor co-founder Patrice Wilson, thanks to growing up in Africa, moving to Eastern Europe as a teenager, and moving to the US as an adult.
• Wild Teen Party: Averted, despite what the song promises.
• Word Salad Lyrics: The interpretation of the song by Bad Lip Reading. It's basically a Deaf Idiot Translation.

"I'm grabbing a routine vaccination, with chicken and sweet carp on the side."

• Wraparound Background: In all three driving sequences, the background keeps repeating.

1. ↑ No, that's not her. Whoever did it has yet to speak up.
2. ↑ Well part of one, anyway...