By Dan Satherley
Rebecca Black shot to fame last week with her song 'Friday', inspiring an outpouring of hate and abuse – but also a slew of cover versions.
And since we here at 3news.co.nz value our readers' sanity, we decided to sift through them all to find the best, so you don't have to.
First off the block was the song done in the style of Bob Dylan – no more hyper-compressed beats and best of all, no more Auto-Tune.
The 'Dylan' cover's had over 10,700 'likes' from 1.1 million views, almost as many as the original – which from over 30 million views has only 15,500 likes and an overwhelming 120,750 dislikes.
Black herself has also tried the acoustic treatment, with far less success – 10 dislikes for every like.
Taking a different tack, Jarett Norton and Danny Dodge put the 'Black' with the 'Friday' and served up a death metal version.
It might not be to everyone's tastes, but with more likes than the original from only 380,000 views, it's certainly someone's idea of an improvement.
If you're more into the classic rock sound, YouTube user dascottjr's done a Meatloaf-soundalike version, nailing the epic piano and bombastic vocal stylings of the former Marvin Lee Aday.
And because it's 2011, it was inevitable someone would do a dubstep remix (the 'wooomp' comes in at the end of the verse).
A few months back, some clever muso type slowed Justin Beiber's 'Baby' to a glacial crawl, the result sounding like Icelanders Sigur Ros jamming with a pod of whales. Now 'Friday' has had the same treatment, stretching the weekend out so long, Sunday comes well afterwards.
Sometimes it's hard to tell whether some of these are actually taking the piss. Alex Carpenter's electro-acoustic cover comes with a video that's so close to the original, and the actors are having so much fun, it borders on homage rather than parody. Even if everyone in the video is about two decades too old.
And what if Aphex Twin did 'Friday'? It'd probably sound something like this.
And no YouTube 'singing' sensation would be considered complete without a tuneless cover version by a couple of hipsters with moustaches and banjos.
Not enough? The original 'Friday' can be endured here.
3 News