Deconstructing Friday

all lyrics quoted are from the song "Friday" performed by Rebecca Black

I am so sick of people criticizing this song and Ms. Black for being "shallow" and "inane." It's clear enough to me that these critics are the ones who are too "shallow" - or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they are too "dense" - to appreciate the hidden significance and depths of meaning amply contained within the lyrics of this deceptively-simple, yet sophisticated gem of the songwriter's art!

I'd be happy to take you through it.

"Yeah, Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ark
Oo-ooh-ooh, hoo yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah, yeah, yeah"

A powerful affirmation of this young woman's positivity.

"Seven a.m., waking up in the morning
Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs
Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal"

Spurred by a sense of her obligations pressing in on her, Ms. Black hurries about her morning routine. Playfully, she shocks our sensibilities with a winking drug reference, only to flip the risque bowl metaphor - filling it instead with wholesome, nutritious grains.

"Seeing everything, the time is going
Ticking on and on, everybody’s rushing
Gotta get down to the bus stop
Gotta catch my bus, I see my friends
(My friends)"

Oppressed by an existential sense of the passage of time and the futility of such rush and bustle, Ms. Black must nonetheless submit to these pressures - she's 13, what choice does she have? The sudden appearance of her friends provides the potential of escape - or at least, of going where she must go, but by means of her own choosing.

"Kicking in the front seat
Sitting in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?"

The choice offered here goes much deeper than surface: "front seat," with its connotations of command and control - of sitting where one can see and perhaps, take charge of one's young life? Or choose the "back seat" - a foreshadowing of grappling with one's emerging sexuality, perhaps?

"It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday"

Another comment on the coercive nature of teenage existence. Everything done must be done, even fun. We get down on Friday, because we gotta get down on Friday.

"Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Getting down on Friday
Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend
Partying, partying (Yeah)
Partying, partying (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Looking forward to the weekend"

The repetitiousness of the song becomes a sly comment on the tedium of life's repetitiousness.

"7:45, we’re driving on the highway
Cruising so fast, I want time to fly
Fun, fun, think about fun
You know what it is
I got this, you got this
My friend is by my right, ay
I got this, you got this
Now you know it"

This part doesn't mean a god-damn thing. A comment on life's ultimate meaninglessness.

"Kicking in the front seat
Sitting in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?"

Still wrestling with the dilemma - the choice between taking charge and yielding up to the easy release of sexuality. Yet note the way the question is phrased: Not "Which seat do I take?" It is "Which seat can I take." The speaker is unsure as to whether the choice is even hers. Ultimately, will she be forced to simply take the seat that circumstances dictate?

"It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Getting down on Friday
Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend
Partying, partying (Yeah)
Partying, partying (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Looking forward to the weekend"

Fun, fun, fun, fun. Partying, partying (Yeah)! Once again, we have no choice: we gotta, we must look forward to the empty revelry of the weekend, to numb us from the empty drudgery of our workaday lives. Sorry - schooladay lives.

"Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday
Today is Friday, Friday (Partying)
We-we-we so excited
We so excited
We gonna have a ball today

Tomorrow is Saturday
And Sunday comes afterwards
I don’t want this weekend to end"

You know what's funny? Just a few weeks back it seems, I was talking to my buddy about how there are so many songs about Saturday, Saturday night, and hardly any about Friday. It was a puzzlement to us both, and so we started experimenting, singing Saturday songs with a Friday substitution: Def Leppard's "Saturday Night (High and Dry) for instance.

It didn't work at all.

"(Rap Interlude)"

I'm not sure the rap interlude really adds anything to the song. I think it was done just for the sake of form - another comment on life's strict insistence on forms, and on our willing conformity to them.

"R,B, Rebecca Black
So chilling in the front seat (In the front seat)
In the back seat (In the back seat)"

In a moment of perverse self-will, we reject the dichotomy of front seat vs. back seat - taking both. But this is a fantasy. How can one chill in two places at the same time?

"I’m driving, cruising (Yeah, yeah)
Fast lanes, switching lanes
With a car up on my side (Woo!)
(C’mon) Passing by is a school bus in front of me
Makes tick tock, tick tock, wanna scream"

The exhilaration of riding free is suddenly broken up by the intrusion of a school bus: an unwelcome reminder that freedom can only be fleeting; that the inhuman clock of society's demands is forever ticking away, measuring out the moments we've been left free, cutting them short on schedule.

"Check my time, it’s Friday, it’s a weekend
We gonna have fun, c’mon, c’mon, y’all"

The tyranny of society's clock is rejected, in a bold carpe diem gesture. I'm going to check my time: It's Friday.

"It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Getting down on Friday
Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend

Partying, partying (Yeah)
Partying, partying (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Looking forward to the weekend

It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend

Partying, partying (Yeah)
Partying, partying (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Looking forward to the weekend"

As many times as we say it, will it prove any more true? Will "our time" Friday ever be anything other than time stolen? A momentary, bittersweet-at-best escape from the forces that govern our real time on earth? The hard time we serve, always in service to lockstep schedules and demands that ultimately, we have bought into? We sell ourselves each day, at the sound of the starting gun: the shrill bleat of an alarm clock.

The song gives no answers to the questions it raises. We party because we must.