albums i listened to all the way through

posted this week and every week (23)

Jul 13, 2025

2011 was, as far as I’m concerned, the worst year of my life.

I think it may have been a pretty bad one for Rebecca Black too.

I remember hearing her name for the first time in the back of my brother’s black Subaru Outback. I, along with him and his partner-in-high-school-senior-crime, were sitting in a Subway parking lot eating sandwiches and listening to whatever they deemed impressive enough to show each other.

When it came to music, the two of them were ruthlessly holier than thou. They traded mixtapes featuring bands and songs I wouldn’t even recognize until well into my early 20s. They snickered at any pop music of the era and made it very obvious what counted as “good.”

So, when his friend—let’s call him Rocko—directed his cruel attentions to a 13-year-old me in the backseat, I knew I was totally fucked.

“What kind of music do you like, Abby?”

This was a trap—a trick question of the most unfair kind. I knew my steady rotation of Glee covers, musical theatre soundtracks, and Jonas Brothers CDs would not cut it.

I fell silent, unsure of how exactly to respond. Rocko took the opportunity to answer for me. He turned to my brother in the driver’s seat and said, “I bet she likes Rebecca Black.”

At the time, I had no clue who she was, but the sneer in his voice implied this was not a compliment.

This was April of 2011, after the infamous release of her first single, “Friday,” and the iconic music video. Yep. You probably remember its insanely viral status. Once lauded as “one of the worst songs ever made” by numerous music critics, “Friday” became the joke song of YouTube and the broader zeitgeist.

Looking back, I feel a unique sort of kinship with Rebecca Black.

Black was 13-years-old at the time, just like me, but performed for Jay Leno on the Tonight Show and received actual death threats because people hated that song so much. While I spent that Spring dealing with the worst, heaviest periods of my life and grieving the pre-mature loss of a parent, Rebecca Black was relentlessly cyber-bullied and dogged on by Internet trolls. She became a symbol of her own scandal, playing into all the pop culture noise surrounding her downfall. Legal issues with the ARK Music Factory folks also brought forth some pretty intense public scrutiny for Black, well beyond the point of necessity. She, along with her heavily auto-tuned voice, was everywhere.

By contrast, I was silent for most of that year.

All I wanted to do was leave my stupid Catholic School, sleep for days on end, and read the Hunger Games books over and over again. My mental health plummeted. I had the first of many panic attacks backstage at a performance of the Sound of Music. I got braces. I was forced to switch schools. At my brother’s high school graduation, I slouched so much in the pictures I looked genuinely pregnant.

I looked the way I felt—awkward, depressed, and painfully insecure.

Why, you may ask?

Our dad died exactly two months before this conversation with Rocko took place. Neither of us were doing well in school, which was a rare departure for us as the children of a helicopter parent/middle school teacher. I guess when he died, so did our desire to get good grades in Math class.

I hated my life. I missed my friends back where my dad lived. The memorial service and subsequent burial of my father’s ashes alongside estranged family members cemented in my brain as something most 13-year-olds probably wouldn’t understand.

Rebecca Black and her controversy are deeply intertwined with this time in my life. I remember watching the music video over and over again, trying to glean some understanding as to why people seemed to hate it so goddamn much. Even then, I could acknowledge its ridiculousness—the underage driving, the random rap verse in the middle from producer and songwriter Patrice Wilson, the weird, barely-there references to The Cure’s “Friday, I’m In Love.”

I just didn’t understand why Black and her video fell prey to adult men with nothing better to do than dunk on a 13-year-old girl for trying to make it in the music business.

Honestly? I think it gave me a complex. From then on, I was always hyperaware of how my music taste and broader cultural exposure were perceived by older men. It didn’t help that most of the guys I ended up befriending in high school were very much of the same indie rock boy variety as Rocko and my brother. I wanted to please and impress them always. I left pop music behind pretty early on, particularly anything deemed too girly or songs about going out with your friends.

So color me surprised by JustSomeMustard’s love and appreciation for the unfairly treated pop girlies of my generation—Carly Rae Jepsen and Rebecca Black.

I followed their post-viral careers very casually. I knew they both released new and different kinds of music. I heard Rebecca Black was a full on queer-identified DJ spinning records and making sizzling remixes of her own musical catastrophes.

This past week, at Mustard’s insistence, I finally listened to her sophomore album, SALVATION.

Uh. Wow. I am not usually one for dance pop or club music, but this album hit the spot. I felt remarkably alive and awake for the first time in many weeks of passive listening. I spent the week reflecting on this time in my life, finding both grace and empathy for Black and myself. How she’s managed to evolve so spectacularly in the wake of releasing one of the first YouTube autotune bombs, only she can say.

Though, it does speak to something I relate to—bred resilience.

It’s incredible to watch as young women in this business go from being shamed and feeling the need to prove their own coolness to throwing caution to the wind and doing whatever feels right artistically.

Something new and entirely unique blossoms from that kind of experience. Rebecca Black has transformed and simultaneously reclaimed what was stolen from her all those years ago. She is her own salvation.

I can only hope to achieve that level of clarity, cool, and courage.

Lampland and Sister. deserve newsletters of their own for their masterful performances on these albums and in the live shows I’ve attended, so stay tuned for those! Thanks JustSomeMustard for the great recommendation and inspiration for this week’s albums newsletter.

Here are the albums I listened to all the way through this past week: