A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Critics call it the worst song ever, the worst music video ever.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FRIDAY")
REBECCA BLACK: (Singing) It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend, weekend.
MARTÍNEZ: It was 2011, and Rebecca Black came out with the song "Friday." Love it or hate it, the song is catchy. It was silly, and it made her an overnight sensation. But the hate she received was ruthless and relentless, online comments calling her talentless, a disgrace. She even received death threats. She was 13 years old at the time. She's now 25, and she's finally coming out with her debut album. It's called "Let Her Burn." Black join me recently to talk about what she experienced as an adolescent and how it has defined her ever since.
BLACK: Going through that as a teenager when the internet was in a completely different place, even just the fact of, like, having millions of people even have awareness that you exist and understanding that as a teenager, is really complicated and something I didn't really understand and probably still don't understand now. But I've struggled a lot as somebody who's kind of grown into who I am now - now I'm 25 - with this experience of feeling like I had been defined by something that I never really set out to be defined by, especially, like, as doing something when you're a kid. I mean, the concept of, like, being defined as an adult by something that you did when you were a kid is crazy to me.
MARTÍNEZ: Were you shielded at all, or did you hear and feel every bit of the hatred that was coming your way?
BLACK: My parents definitely tried to do everything that they could, right? I - being a 13-year-old in 2011, like, I had a Twitter. I had a YouTube. I had a Facebook. I had everything. I...
MARTÍNEZ: Wow, you were loaded with social media. My goodness.
BLACK: I was, like, in that era of, like, kids on the internet, which I think obviously has expanded a lot more now. Like, seeing my 8-year-old sister with a TikTok account is so scary. But I just - I found a lot of who I was or I think discovered a lot of who I was being a kid of the internet. So I knew the internet in a way that my parents never really even knew how to protect me from. So, I mean, I think in a sense, as much as they were able to protect me from things like maybe the death threats at the time, I saw and read everything. It took a toll. I mean, those words have such a different, like, intensity when you're a child because you just obviously believe them. These are coming from adults. And, like, as a child, you're trained to believe everything, I guess, that comes from people who are older than you.
MARTÍNEZ: Adults but idiots, though.
BLACK: Well, yeah. I mean, now we all know that. But (laughter) as a 13-year-old, that just got so deep into my skin to a level that I couldn't really understand but that I've done a lot of work, I think, as a person hopefully to ease some of that now.
(SOUNDBITE OF REBECCA BLACK SONG, "DESTROY ME")
MARTÍNEZ: A hard fast-forward now to the album "Let Her Burn." One of the songs in "Let Her Burn" is "Destroy Me."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DESTROY ME")
BLACK: (Singing) Every time you see me, do you hear violins? Cut a little deeper. There's no reaching the end. Watch me while I crash and burn again and again. Go ahead, destroy me. Destroy me. Feeling pretty cute until I ran into you. Chewed me up and spit me out like gum on your shoe. And if you're free and you've got nothing better to do, go ahead, destroy me, destroy me.
MARTÍNEZ: It sounds like it's, like, one of these songs about being judged by other people's standards.
BLACK: Totally. I mean, the song - the album has a lot to do with my own relationship with myself and the ways in which that I speak to myself and those relationships I've had. And that song, "Destroy Me" - oh, it's so exciting to get to talk about this. That song is really about the lack in security that you have in with yourself, I guess giving permission for other people to come in and I guess destroy you or kind of shake up your own view of yourself. Also, like, I think there comes this point in letting go of the control that you have in that moment of do I even have the ability to fight for myself? No, I don't. So go ahead. And that is another bigger theme within the album is learning how to let go in a lot of different ways and thus, like, let her burn.
MARTÍNEZ: That's tough, though, letting go. I mean...
BLACK: Yeah.
MARTÍNEZ: And I hate to bring back your history, but it's like, if you decided not to trust anyone ever again, I think you'd be fully justified because of everything you went through. But...
BLACK: Sure.
MARTÍNEZ: ...It's tough to just have that whole thing of like, look, I just need to put myself out there, and I don't care what anyone thinks about it.
BLACK: Yeah. I just think so much about myself as a child and myself as a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old and what she dreamed of being. I dreamed of having freedom. Like, I dreamed of being able to be the person I wanted to be that I hadn't learned to be at that point. And those are, I guess, the moves I try to make within my life. Like, do I feel like I'm really doing this because I want to do it? Do I feel like I really believe in what I'm saying? Do I feel proud of what I'm putting out? Those are the things I think about more than anything.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOOK AT YOU")
BLACK: (Singing) People see you on the screen and think you're make-believe. But I tell them you're better in person. You got that kind of confidence that makes everyone obsessed. But be honest. I know that you're hurting.
MARTÍNEZ: The reason why your story interests me so much is because there are a lot of times in this day and age where you get defined by something, whether it's good or bad, and that turns out to be the only way - the only prism that people have of you. And it takes some luck and hard work to get over that or at least get people to see someone different. I think this seems to be your moment of hopefully people seeing you different.
BLACK: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely a piece of it. I'd be lying if I didn't say that this moment, I'm really intentionally - and I guess that's also part of the reason why maybe this moment took so long to get to is I wanted this moment to show people that, like, I deserve to not just be, like, a comeback story, but, like, this album is just as good as everything else that's out there right now. And this album can compete. And I, as a performer, can compete with all the other pop stars that are in this realm. That was really important for me. And I hope that's - not even I hope. Like, I feel - I feel that way about myself and where I'm at now, and whether or not other people agree or disagree will forever be up to them.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ERASE YOU")
BLACK: (Singing) I can't think about any of the good things about you now. Just all the ways that you let me down got me lashing out, lashing out.
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