(Yeah, Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ark)
Oo-ooh-ooh, hoo yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah-ah-ah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Seven a.m., waking up in the morning
Gotta be fresh, gotta go downstairs
Gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal
Seein' everything, the time is goin'
Tickin' on and on, everybody's rushin'
Gotta get down to the bus stop
Gotta catch my bus, I see my friends (My friends)
Kickin' in the front seat
Sittin' in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?
It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin' down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend
Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Partyin', partyin' (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun
Lookin' forward to the weekend
7:45, we're drivin' on the highway
Cruisin' so fast, I want time to fly
Fun, fun, think about fun
You know what it is I got this, you got this
My friend is by my right, ay I got this, you got this
Now you know it
Kickin' in the front seat
Sittin' in the back seat
Gotta make my mind up
Which seat can I take?
It's Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody's lookin' forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Here's the thing, the song has a (forgive me) classic meaning: carpe diem. Still doesn't make it a poem. If this song is put up against what is probably the most famous carpe diem poem in history, Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to make much of Time," it simply doesn't hold up. Compare the lyrics to the poem:
| GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may, | |
| Old Time is still a-flying: | |
| And this same flower that smiles to-day | |
| To-morrow will be dying. | |
| The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, | 5 |
| The higher he 's a-getting, | |
| The sooner will his race be run, | |
| And nearer he 's to setting. | |
| That age is best which is the first, | |
| When youth and blood are warmer; | 10 |
| But being spent, the worse, and worst | |
| Times still succeed the former. | |
| Then be not coy, but use your time, | |
| And while ye may, go marry: | |
| For having lost but once your prime, | 15 |
| You may for ever tarry. |
Essentially the song and the poem both mean the same thing: take advantage of life while you're young, seize the day, go after every opportunity to enjoy life before it's too late. But still, they're very different. A closer look at Black's lyrics reveal that there is actually nothing more to reveal; in it's basic form all the song is saying, "Let's have a good time on Friday," without metaphor or figurative language. What makes this not a poem is that the words don't transcend the music, nor do they hold any hidden meaning - everything is just laid out there, nice and obvious. Also, there's the issue of her actual choice of words - how can one "kick it" in the front seat and sit in the back seat at the same time? This shows a total lack of craft that she can't keep the logistics of her song straight. She's young, I get it, but what concerns me more than anything is every high school student knows Rebecca Black and her un-poetic drivel, but if asked who wrote the line "Gather ye rosebuds while ya may," many of them would not be able to tell me.
By contrast, what makes Herrick's poem a poem? It requires thought, and interpretation for one thing. And there is a tone of urgency which can only be expressed through his word choice - "The age is best which is the first, / When youth and blood are warmer; / But being spent, the worse, and worst / Times still succeed the former" - when I read these lines I notice that I even begin to pick up the pace as the poem goes on.
So, Dylan/Herrick v. Black? Even putting the names together hurts. "Friday" just is not in the least poetic.
I love the way you've put these three things side by side. The basic observation that Black's lyrics are insipid allows us to think about the relation of poetry to music, and your comments about this are a start, though I think there's even more interesting routes to take the discussion. Here's some responses to your ideas:
ReplyDelete1) The idea that Friday and Herrick's poem share the same theme is correct, BUT Herrick's poem is exploring the idea in much more depth and with much more beauty. So, I wouldn't say that they are "saying the same thing." How does Herrick's poem achieve this depth? As you point out, it's through the use of what we've come to think of as poetic devices: figurative language, rhythm and rhyme. There's also a sense of a sustained, developed argument in the Herrick poem, an exertion of thought. It would be a cool experiment to have "Dylan" sing Herrick's poem like the video has him do with "Friday." I suspect that it would have a certain power--and that it wouldn't feel stupid or corny.
2) All that said, we're talking about very traditional, even old-fashioned, views of poetry, particularly if you want to argue that poetry has a meaning that you have to work for and interpret. Many twentieth century poets especially have composed in their own ways to resist this version of poetry, from William Carlos Williams to Frank O'Hara. In fact, there's an immediate charm to Friday, I think, in how pedestrian the details are at the beginning of the song--the bowl, the cereal, the bus stop. What happens, though, is that it soon becomes clear that the consciousness presenting these details is vapid, that the details themselves don't even begin to add up to anything significant, but only show the superficiality of the singer's life and world view. In fact, that's what makes the piece entertaining. If she were earnestly trying for some "deeper meaning," it would just be a failure of execution, but an intelligent audience is amused and appalled--I think--at the comfort and certainty Black seems to have in her "ideas." It's the failure of vision that made this piece go viral.
All this is to say that poetry can have that talky quality, and often some of the most interesting poetry resists the feeling of a "deeper meaning." Much of the New York School, for example, seemed to actively resist that sense that there was something under the surface.
3) Seeing "Dylan" sing the song also says something about the way certain kinds of music create settings for the words. A simple acoustic guitar and a few chords establishes expectations in the audience that we are going to get lyrics that 1) we can probably make out and understand and 2) that have a depth to them. Essentially, it's a signal that the lyrics are the central artistic element in the work. This raises lots of questions about what happens when different kinds of music get paired with lyrics (is it a different effect when you have the pop sound of "Friday"? What would happen if you took "Desolation Row" and sung it to the track of "Friday"? And what if the lyrics get sung/presented differently?
I do realize that as far as "Friday" is concerned, I can't really look at it through the same lens as Herrick's work, and if I attempt to, I tend to adopt an old fashioned view of what poetry "should be." The point of "Friday" is not to take it seriously, but it is exactly what it projects - a party song for the weekend. That being said, regardless of its presentation, to me, the song still not poetic (even if "Bob Dylan" is strumming along. I think the reason for this is the superficial nature of the lyrics, which as stated before, don't go any deeper than "It's Friday and I'm going out with my friends," versus the obviously much deeper nature of Herrick's work. In what is purely my own opinion, I firmly believe poetry is only true poetry when the words say something much deeper than what they present on the page, whether it is merely the tone of the work (which is subject to change depending on the reader) or the actual meaning of the piece. If that is the case, then Black's work is not poetry because, unlike Herrick's work, it does not go any deeper than a catchy beat and poppy lyrics.
ReplyDeleteWould "Friday" change if it was sung in a different way? Well, no. Just listen to the "Bob Dylan" version above. Conversely, I think that should a song like "Desolation Row" was put into the sound of "Friday," it might lose some of its poetic magic. I'm not sure whether this is because I have been trained to hear "Desolation Row" a certain way or not. I think that the juxtaposition of the tone of the lyrics mixed with the tone of "Friday" would be odd, and would absolutely change the meaning, because how could those lyrics be heard with that pop sounds and connect to the story they're trying to tell in the same way? They couldn't. So to conclude, I don't consider "Friday" poetry because when compared with what is so obviously poetic, it becomes somewhat ridiculous.
Is this poetic? It comes from one of the US's most well-liked poets from the last century, Frank O'Hara. It seems to deliberately insist on not being "deeper." The term "deeper" probably will always be a little squishy, but I think one of contemporary poetry's pleasures is exactly how it resists our established feelings of what "deeper" is:
ReplyDeleteIt's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
from "A Step Away From Them" Frank O'Hara