Rebecca Black is Learning to Find Joy

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“I’m twenty four now, and people can be so surprised by the kind of music I make now, or the way I dress or the way I look… Like guys, I’m not thirteen anymore. We all evolve.” Singer and Youtuber Rebecca Black passionately confesses this to me while we chat about Solar Power by Lorde and the evolution of a musician’s music as they age. Rebecca, who is never not without a smile on her face, appears warm, confident and content as we chat about what it was like being a former child star (via the internet), kindness and how she’s just having fun with her music. 

In a 2009 interview, renowned feminist author bell hooks stated that "we don't live in a culture that really loves children." Rebecca knows this first hand after her music video for her monumental 2011 single Friday went viral on Youtube and attracted a significant amount of negative press. In 2017, Rebecca wrote an article for NBC News about being a target of internet hate; she wrote, "The fact that there was a human, a person - a thirteen year-old-girl - on the other side of the screen seemingly escaped so many people's attention." 

“I’m twenty four now, and people can be so surprised by the kind of music I make now, or the way I dress or the way I look… Like guys, I’m not thirteen anymore. We all evolve.”

Rebecca is fully aware of how much the conversation has changed around Friday, telling the Evening Standard, "I just think there's been a lot of change over the past ten years with how people view that song... People have said to me they look back and find joy in it." 

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With this new reception, Rebecca is still trying to navigate and understand celebrity. "I get parts of why it happens. We put so much faith in someone because we hope it will bring us something we lack. Whether it's joy, whether it is a community, whether it's aspirations etc. We don't have what we want in ourselves, so we try and find it in other people, and then we realise that uh oh! They are just a person who is also lacking and looking for something else too, and then we get disappointed in them. So we have to kind of demonise them, or else it would suck to actually deal with the problem at hand, which is the fact we are missing security in ourselves." 

What Rebecca is saying may sound harsh, but it's true. Those we admire deeply are not superhuman. They are just people like you and me, and they will inevitably disappoint us because we are all flawed. Rebecca disclosed the time she realised that her parents were not the ideals she thought they were. "I love my parents very much, but everybody is very complex, and it devastated me to realise this. But it also makes us more empathic and understanding to them and their situation. I think it's a beautiful thing to look for inspiration within others, but if you're not actually filling any holes within yourself, then you're going to feel constantly disappointed in others. So check yourself if you're feeling regularly disappointed by other people and truly ask yourself if you're putting more faith in others than you are yourself."

Artists such as Lorde have followed in Rebecca's footsteps to discuss the brutality of teenage stardom publicly. In an interview in The Times and The Sunday Times earlier this year, Jonathan Dean tells Lorde that there are two theories about teenage celebrity: "When you are very young, some say you become trapped in the age you became famous. Others say that if you start your adult life at sixteen (thirteen in Rebecca's case), you are forced to grow up faster than your peers." I asked Rebecca where she thought she fell in those theories. 

Rebecca replied, "I'd like to say I turned out perfect! I didn't deal with anything!" We both laughed, and then she seriously explained that "I think both of those things are true, at least in my case. When you're a child and put into very adult situations, it automatically forces you to learn very quickly to keep up. I was no longer just in school dealing with my thirteen-year-old problems, I was learning about all these new parts of life and the industry in positive and negative ways. To become a whole realised person takes time and patience, and there's not a lot of patience in the music industry, especially for children, and a lot of people don't know how to deal with children. I remember my first manager had never worked with a child before, and that should have been red flag number one for me. My parents did the best job they could have done for people who had no experience in this industry and who were being taken advantage of because of their lack of knowledge."

“To become a whole realised person takes time and patience, and there's not a lot of patience in the music industry, especially for children, and a lot of people don't know how to deal with children.”

Rebecca reveals that there can be a lot of misunderstanding between management and child stars: "You start to learn such adult things, but that gets really confusing when you're a child who is having child emotions but also at the same time knows how to present themselves as an adult. That's confusing for everyone."

She continues, "When adults put a child at the front of creating and making a living for them, everyone's interest is in themselves, and everybody, as much as they want to care for you, is in it for themselves. When you're an adult and you understand professional relationships, you can understand that much better. But as a child, when someone is there to help you, you assume they want to help you, like your parents want to help you or your teachers and friends. You put that same faith in the people you are working with professionally. So there is an unequal amount of understanding in what people are there for." Olivia Rodrigo said it best, who are young girls in the music industry if not exploited? 

One of the things Rebecca wishes is that there was more space and time put into how stardom affects children. "There are certain regulations put in place, but we've seen time and time again the trajectory of child stars to a life that is hell, and there is a reason for that. That doesn't happen out of nowhere - that person isn't just going insane for no reason. There is a way to fix that and it will just take a lot more effort from the adults around them to be decent people." 

(If you want to learn more about children, their rights and the importance of loving children as people, not property, bell hooks' All About Love is a great place to start.)

Over the years, Rebecca has passionately and openly spoken up against cyberbullying and the cruelty of the internet on young people's mental health. She tells me that "on the internet young people are constantly performing. We are always trying to present a version of ourselves to feel liked and safe, but it isn't who we truly are. No matter how many people are trying to make safe spaces happen, we don't really have a lot of safe places where it's okay to be ourselves when we're young and impressionable."

Rebecca's advice to young people who find themselves in the spotlight early on in life is the same advice she would give her adolescent self: "I just wish I was nicer to myself. I wish I had allowed myself to do the things I really wanted to do when I felt too scared to do it. All these things that I was afraid would make me uncool or unacceptable; I don't think twice about those things anymore." 

"I'm learning ways to have a bit more forgiveness for myself and also find more joy in life. I am learning to find joy in everything, and I think that is my biggest goal. The joy in all the variety that life gives you, whether it is positive or negative or at least find the lessons."

Though Rebecca admits that being nicer to yourself as a child is easier said than done. "So I have a six-year-old sister and I'm home right now, so I'm with her all the time, and I think it's so interesting because when you're a child, there's nobody around you that is really modelling how to be nice to yourself. It's not cool to be nice to yourself, but it's very cool to be like - ‘I'm in my flop era’ - which I say all the time." 

At this point of our interview, I burst into laughter, firstly because that Twitter phrase is hilarious and secondly because I felt like Rebecca just dragged me to filth - I say that I'm "in my flop era" more than I care to admit. Rebecca with a smile on her face pointed straight at me accusingly, "Yeah, I know you do it too." Caught red handed by the star herself.

"As children, we are never really taught to be like ‘yeah, I think I did good there.’ If you say that, you're all of a sudden humble bragging." And Rebecca's right. We wouldn't tell our friends or family members who are going through a hard time that they're in their ‘flop era,’ so why tell yourself that? Your self-depreciation really doesn't benefit anyone, and isn't helping you grow. 

Rebecca confesses: "I'm learning ways to have a bit more forgiveness for myself and also find more joy in life. I am learning to find joy in everything, and I think that is my biggest goal. The joy in all the variety that life gives you, whether it is positive or negative or at least find the lessons."

“I just want to come up with what brings me joy, and if it gives me a feeling, hopefully, it will give someone else a feeling out there too."

Today, Rebecca just enjoying her life and her music. I spoke to Rebecca on the 6th of October; this was the same day her music video for YOGA came out with bbno$. In the video, Rebecca plays Alexander Leon Gumuchian (bbno$) and looks like the ultimate bro, with Alexander in head to toe drag playing Rebecca's leading lady. Rebecca tells me that "Music doesn't have to be so serious. For so long, I've been trying to prove to people that I'm a serious artist. I've found a lot of freedom in what I do now, and I started taking a lot of pressure off what I'm trying to achieve. Music is best to me when it provides some sense of a feeling, some sense of an escape."

Even though there is always pressure to make a TikTok worthy hit, Rebecca isn't worried about that anymore. "I've tried to do that, but It's never worked out, and I've hated what I'd come up with. So I just want to come up with what brings me joy, and if it gives me a feeling, hopefully, it will give someone else a feeling out there too." 

Photographer: Andrea Riba | Words: Halima Jibril | Stylist: Brooke Llewellyn | Hair: Gregg Lennon Jr. | Make-up: Nick Lennon | VHS: Bobby Dissmore