Teen viral sensation finds Salvation

This month Australia introduced laws to address the toxic aspects of online life, but not so long ago it seemed that it was perfectly normal for much of the internet to direct a surprising amount of hate and harsh words towards a young girl from California. People who go viral for reasons beyond their control often disappear into the scene of offline life. Rebecca Black never shied away.

Black is currently touring Australia with Kendrick Lamar and Doechii as part of the Spilled Milk festival. He also headlines his own shows, including his biggest show at Melbourne’s Forum Theatre. If you think his presence has anything to do with it FridayYou’re living in the past, the song that catapulted him to fame and became the most viewed YouTube video the year it was released.

A quick summary, that’s all Friday The matter deserves. When Black was 13, he recorded a new pop song and video with a company in Los Angeles that offered just such an experience to ordinary people. Friday It was intended to be throwaway entertainment to share with friends, but somehow the music video found its way online at the exact moment when memes and evil became inseparable.

Up until that point, social media had been a largely benign place filled with lolcats, rickrolling, and pokes. However, by 2011 the situation began to change. The default tone was sharper, the humor became more brutal, and any innocent could find themselves lifted up as the object of public ridicule. The socials democratized the angry mob by promising everyone a pitchfork and a burning torch.

It’s hard to overstate how vile the response was Friday It happened when strangers posted the most violent and childish comments towards a random kid whose home movie made them very upset. From medieval witch trials to screaming fans of the Fab Four and twilight and according to what Tay-Tay said recently, there are some people who start screaming when they see a girl having fun the way she wants.

Today Black: 1, Haters: 0. He never gave up. The 28-year-old actor played in the DJ set at Lollapalooza, one of the largest music festivals in the world, this year. Punters who only remember him as Friday The girl was lying on the ground. The set list for this concert includes Britney’s songs familiar from the pop world Toxic Next to Bjork hyperballad Replacing Addison Rae Fame is a Weapon – but you won’t find his bootleg cuts anywhere on Spotify or Shazam. They look both familiar and demonstrate a deep knowledge of today’s dance culture.

When it comes to black DJs, he says, “I’m there to highlight tracks that I really love and feel connected to, that I found in the depths of SoundCloud or in a random part of someone’s discography. I like to play throwback stuff because I want to play remixes that I wish I could hear in a club, that I know would be played in the depths of some weird underground club in Barcelona.”

The mix of pop appeal and underground edginess is what Black’s own songwriting has evolved from. His last album, Liberationa heady mix of abrasive hyperpop (think SOPHIE or Charli XCX) and the kind of ambitious songwriting that fell out of favor in the first few decades of this century.

“I feel like I’m listening to things from the past rather than what’s going on right now. That’s where I learn,” Black says. “If you go back and listen to some of the big pop stars of the ’90s, like Madonna, Janet, it was a period when pop was really interesting.

“Listen to some instrumentals online Velvet Rope, Ray of Light, Erotic. I think it was a time when pop was at its best and celebrated for constantly trying to push itself forward… I think that’s why pop died for a moment. It was as if morality had disappeared. Everyone was trying to make something truly digestible.

The young black man may have been treated harshly by the internet, but like most people his age, his musical tastes were discovered online. “I don’t think my relationship with music is any different than a lot of my fans,” he says. “It was really a relationship with the internet, a relationship with artists who were really specific to the internet. So I was a Tumblr kid growing up. My audience was my peers.”

This may be why comments on his videos today speak so clearly about how our online culture has changed. They admire the artist and are passionate about their love for his new work, punctuated at times with shocking praise from viewers who don’t realize how true it is. HE Rebecca Black.

“I think there are some pieces of the internet where there is an intention to treat others with kindness,” he says. “I see moments when the internet tries to police itself.”

He found his friends, albeit offline. 2025’s Rebecca Black has become an icon in queer club spaces, where much of the most interesting music happens. “I think there are a lot of places outside the US that are much more developed in the gay spaces that they have, including Australia and Melbourne.”

He also does many meet and greets during the tour. “I love them because I really like to understand who gets this. Who gets me this way?”

lyrics Liberation it sometimes flirts with possible references to Black’s past—the title track’s chorus sings, “I don’t need you to save me/I’ve already saved myself”—but the vocals also play with voice and character to blur personal experience and the playfulness of the plot.

“Some of these characters are ways that I can channel parts of myself that only exist in my head,” he says. “There are ways that we talk to ourselves or talk to ourselves about things in our heads that I could never articulate, even with a partner. It just lives for me. But the other place it can live is in a song. These characters are the most deeply personal in a way because I keep them like a different version of me, but actually that’s probably the most real.”

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Liberation It’s definitely darker than you’d expect, full of growling basslines and distorted synths, but it avoids the cynicism that can undercut so much pop today. It’s an album that goes hard, like its DJ sets, without ever losing its sense of optimism.

“I don’t know if it was completely intentional,” he says.

“I think there’s an optimism in my life that keeps me going, and there’s an optimism about the things that I know how to communicate with. I don’t know where that optimism comes from. I just think it helps me get through it.”

Rebecca Black plays at the Forum Theater on December 11.