Rebecca Black vs Jenna Rose

It is also believed that they have been costuming cabbages and passing them off as human beings. – Principia Discordia

It seems that everyone loves to hate Rebecca Black's impossibly vapid single "Friday", and for reasons that are mostly apparent: it's mindless, repetitive, and speaks to nothing but a privileged adolescence. One thing I noticed about the song that nobody seems to be saying is that it makes Jenna Rose look good.

Jenna Rose, another YouTube darling, has a single called "My Jeans" about, you guessed it, Jeans. The song is pretty mindless and is about a girl who has a pair of Jeans that she sees someone famous wearing in a magazine and therefore feels superior to her peers whose jeans are not featured in a magazine. By comparison, Rebecca Black's "Friday" is about how Friday is when the weekend starts, and weekends are "fun, fun, fun, fun, etc…"

 
When you compare the two songs, both of them are about the simpler concerns of a relatively privileged adolescence and lack any real emotional depth. They both have a catchy repetitiveness, but not so catchy that you feel compelled to listen to them again. However, "My Jeans" comes off as more genuine and whimsical. It's shallow, but in a way that you feel a young girl might actually have written it, enjoyed writing it, and felt proud when it was finished. Rebecca Black's video comes off as a little too polished to be the whimsical work of a young girl and ends up taking itself too seriously, which is why she's now an internet joke.

 
Rebecca Black's "Friday" is about such privilege that her life is made up of nothing but fun and school. While most kids have reason to look forward to the weekend, many have to work or help the family with chores. While Jenna Rose's song also speaks to privilege, there is nothing in the song that prevents a teenager who had to get a job to buy their own clothes from relating to the thrill of wearing something that was featured in a magazine.

While both Rebecca Black and Jenna Rose are shallow and simplistic, Jenna Rose manages, by comparison, to have more content and to be more relatable, and generally seems less manufactured. This raises an important question: Is it actually a good thing to have someone who makes Jenna Rose look good achieve as much fame as Rebecca Black?