When “Friday” became a YouTube sensation, or rather, catastrophe, we learned that Rebecca Black knows the days of the week. Now, thanks to Nicole Westbrook, we know that Christmas is in December and New Year’s is in January, but Thanksgiving is — guess what? — this month.
Patrice Wilson, who produced Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” released Westbrook’s “It’s Thanksgiving” on YouTube last week. It is well on its way to becoming just as viral as “Friday,” which is why it is so baffling that someone thought it would be a good idea to post this for the entire Internet to see.
Westbrook may be a pre-teen who wants to be famous. And she certainly has parents who are rich enough to pay Wilson to make her a music video with all of her “friends” about how great her life is. But while “Friday” was about a day that every human being appreciates, this song is about Thanksgiving. There’s a reason that people devote days of their time to listening to Christmas music.There is no such thing as a Thanksgiving playlist, because everyone is usually too busy eating, and they know that Thanksgiving is actually about food. Not Westbrook though. From the moment she wakes up in the morning, she is thinking about thanking everyone in her life. At least this is more promising than Black in the morning, given than Black claims that she has to focus so hard on her breakfast that she needs to remember to take out both her bowl and her cereal. She is also way less auto tuned than Black was — a major plus.
And then any promise Westbrook had ends.From that point until the end of the video, she stops making sense and starts oohing and yeahing because everyone knows that you just have to look pretty and open your mouth to have a successful song these days. Wilson certainly capitalizes on her looks, as she is wearing more makeup than a 12-year old should ever wear. When her songs progresses into the sequences of why Thanksgiving is not the same as Christmas, she is wearing a Santa hat and all of her friends are wearing skimpy dresses. This is juxtaposed with her wearing a flowered dress when she sings about how Easter is in April, although it is not always in April. Even the food is presented in an overtly sexual way. The camera lingers far too long on her pouring corn into the pot and licking mashed potatoes off of her finger. While she is doing all of this, she is listing each food item brought to her house and saying “ey!” afterwards because it is just that exciting. She even brings back Black’s famous “We we we so excited,” although she changes it to her own ‘We we we, we’re gonna have a good time.”
The video then transitions to Westbrook spinning around outside and singing about how much she just wants to thank everyone. Again, this is a nice sentiment, but what 12-year-old would admit that she just loves Thanksgiving so much because she is able to thank everyone in her life? At least she admits that school is out. Valid.
And then Wilson’s face appears from the bottom of the screen while Westbrook starts singing about Christmas again. He is inexplicably at every single one of Westbrook’s holiday parties. The best moment is while Westbrook is wearing her innocent Easter dress and she doesn’t seem to know that Wilson is there, pretending to be happy about the holidays while he is creepily watching her. This is reminiscent of the moment in “Friday” where he is randomly driving a car and rapping about how seeing school buses full of kids makes him “wanna scream.” It is unclear whether Wilson is actually a pedophile. He might just be brilliant enough to write these terrible songs and somehow still make a ton of money.It’s probably a combination of both.
Westbrook’s friends arrive at the Thanksgiving dinner that she’s hosting, because it’s totally normal for tweens to have their own dinner with no parents anywhere in sight. No worries though, there’s adult supervision – Wilson is there wearing a turkey costume. They start to say grace, but Westbrook is having none of that. She’d much rather rap and look as sassy as a 12-year-old possibly can while trying to tell their friends that they should be “forgivin” (it rhymes with Thanksgiving).
Because she actually has nothing to say about the holiday, she tries to look clever by repeating the same line twice, but switching it around because that way no one will notice. She sings “Can’t be hateful gotta be grateful/ gotta be grateful can’t be hateful” and then randomly points to some of her friends that she’s forgiving. Wilson has this tween clique thing down, as he did the same thing in “Friday” when Black talked about her friend on the right but not on her left. At this point, the song has become sufficiently auto tuned and her friends are having way too much of a good time. Oh, and she is using a turkey leg as a microphone.
As she continues to sing about the various food on the table, the video goes back to all of the other holidays that Westbrook hosts with her friends and Wilson. Don’t worry, Wilson is in a turkey costume the entire time, which makes it totally okay that he’s the only adult in a room full of 12-year-old girls.
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