A recent video by wannabe pop-artist Rebecca Black has become viral with over 100 million views on YouTube.  “Friday” is a rap-like music video about a girl who

…cries out for reprieve from a life in the inner city where shootings and crime are a way of life? No.

…seeks peace in a country torn apart by war and bloodshed? No.

…lives in the shadow of a terminal illness? No.

…suffers from negligence and abuse? No.

…lives with an unusual perspective on life? Uh, no.

It’s about a fourteen year old suburban California girl with rich parents and a passive inclination to be famous – a girl whose point in life is to be “kicking” with two hundred of her closest friends on Friday after a week of activity, education and privilege.  Not that there are a myriad of songs with similar themes, except that her manufactured song is SOOooo bad, along with the accompanying music video, it’s downright cringe-worthy. Even an excessive use of auto-tune could not suppress the spiritually void execution of a song financed by her mom and outsourced to a professional music video company with a commission to make their little Veruca Salt[1] a star!  Well, it worked. Rebecca Black IS a star, in the imploding, red-dwarf sense of the word.

Juxtapose this music video to another less viewed one of a 22 year old Korean man Sung Bong Choi who lived on the streets since he was five selling gum and energy drinks.  If I am to believe the translation of this video of Korea’s Got Talent, the young man explains his story to the judges as he stands there in laborers clothes, apologizes that he does not sing well at all, but then proceeds to belt out a song that only a life of deep deprivation could supply. Only moments into the performance and the audience and judges were weeping.

If we ever manage to achieve our utopia where everyone is privileged, everyone is rich, no one works, no one is ill and no one suffers—don’t get me wrong, that will be great!!!

But our music will suck.