Internet Meme of the Week: Bob Dylan’s “Friday”
By Gavin Huang, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Monday, April 4, 2011
If you take the recording circulating around YouTube lately at face value, it would seem that Bob Dylan wrote Rebecca Black’s hit “Friday.” Could the writer of “Like a Rolling Stone,” which Rolling Stone Magazine named the greatest song of all time in 2004, really have written what critics are now calling the worst song of all time?
“Of course he did,” one YouTube video insists. In a parody examining Dylan’s music, titled “No Direction Period,” music experts insist that Dylan has written every single popular song from the past 35 years. The video includes plenty of anachronistic performacnes by Dylan, portrayed by an appropriately slurring actor.
The mockumentary is four years old, but it has recently gained attention following the release of a new Dylan cover video of “Friday” only days after Rebecca Black posted her video on YouTube, playing off of the irony of the greatest songwriter of all time singing the worst song of all time. Contrary to Internet buzz, the singer is not Dylan himself, though the voice is quite convincing. This reinterpretation of the song might even sound bearable. As one commenter noted, “God, you can just hear the ache and pain in Dylan’s voice.” Yes, one can really hear Dylan’s painful yearning for the fun, fun weekend with his soft, folksy voice and calm chords.