Life After Rebecca Black

OR

The great tragedy of Rebecca Black (click here if you missed the internet this week) is that this is it for her as both a human being and, more importantly, a meme. She's washed up at the age of 13 after less than a week in the spotlight. Nothing can follow "Friday" for her because it was a perfect storm. Cereal bowls, a fat Usher-lookalike phoning in a rap from the cockpit of his CGI car, Saturday following Sunday and the girl in pink who dances like a ragdoll caught in a paper shredder (current Facebook fanpage numbers for "That girl in pink who danced awkwardly in Rebecca Black's Friday": 47,000).

Rebecca Black will be unable to sustain any degree of fame or relevance because debuting as an ironic meme is like taking your first movie cheque from Bang Bros – you can't switch to legitimacy later on. And if she tries to release another "Friday" on purpose, it'd be like the Star Wars kid coming back dressed as Austin Powers and shouting "YEAH GROOVY BABY" into a webcam for four minutes: a second trip to the well by someone who didn't realise they only had one shot at this, (the last video on this blog basically).

So Rebecca Blake is over. But there has to be a new meme seam to mine here. A piece of pop culture couldn't have been more made for Tumblr than "Friday" if Jared Leto started tattooing Sylvia Plath quotes onto his cat. So why not head back to the source?

You're probably aware by now that "Friday" was put out/written/created/spawned by the Ark Music Factory. From what I can tell Ark are a company that specialise in helping the children of people with more money than sense realise their Disney pop wank fantasies (or whatever people do before they know what wanking is). Surely one other Ark Music Factory act has meme potential? Surely one of these cats can get themselves a mock-up of them being sodomised by a mudkip on 4Chan and an article in Metro's "internet" section four months after anyone's stopped caring?

Here's your runners and riders.

ALANA LEE - "BUTTERFLIES"

Alana Lee was the artiste that Ark had originally groomed for stardom and were giving a legit push to, but now she'll learn how Tom Bosley felt when the focus of Happy Days shifted to Henry Winkler. Can Lee claw her way back? Probably not. The song sounds like tinnitus, the other girl in the video is way hotter than her and Fat Usher turns up with more "rhymes" that don't actually rhyme or make sense. Is he the owner of the company or just a tweenpop equivalent of a mope?

Meme Potential: This is actually worse and less funny song than "Friday", so not great. Could turn out to be Ark's 'Xtina' to Rebecca's 'Britney', but that's not something I like to spend too much time thinking about.

ABBY VICTOR - "CRUSH ON YOU"

Abby Victor appears to be relatively old (over eleven), which makes this a lot worse. I think her parents are also a lot poorer than those of the other acts on Ark because she doesn't go anywhere until the second verse. Instead they cut budget costs down by filming her standing still from a multitude of pointless angles. She does get to harmonise and stand next to Fat Usher though, which I imagine costs more than it does to get him to just turn up and "lay some lyrics" over the top of a "lull in the terrifying Europop blare".

Meme potential: Very, very low. She wears one of those tiny hats at an angle that fat middle class women wear on hen nights, and Fat Usher rolls up rocking a short-sleeved hoodie. Maybe they can get some play on style blogs, but I can't see the kids popping for it.

ARIANA DVORNIK - "FLY AWAY"

Dvornik's cheeks and chin appear to have been collected from two completely different people which makes this a really hard video to watch, especially because it utilises the same colour scheme as shithouse broadbanders TalkTalk. It's a shame, as it's by far the most blandly acceptable track Ark have put out. It sounds like the third single from one of those teenpop singers people only ever talk about when naked photos of them leak online.

Meme potential: Maybe a webcomic in which her chin and her cheekbones are an odd, mismatched cop partnership? The dance routine definitely has gif potential, particularly the "I'm an aeroplane with breasts" titty heave at 1:49. Can't help but think Fat Usher isn't earning his crust in this one. He turns up for a few seconds to compare Ariana to an eagle before disappearing back to whatever porn set Ark pulled him from.

JOLIE ADAMSON - "ARMOUR"

This sounds like Blood On The Dance Floor or one of those other awful bands that Russians with webcams like. So this has lots of farting bass noises, Adamson frolicking about on a beach shoeless and at one point there's a clever post-modern callback/ when she sings "and you give me butterflies". But there's something missing, something that ultimately hamstrings "Armour" as a whole. As one YouTube commenter rightly points out: "WHERE THE FUCK IS MY RAPPING 40-YEAR-OLD BLACK GUY?"

Meme potential: Hey yeah a 14-year-old girl in a bikini copping off with a sweaty guy on a pink bedspread? Yeah, I think there are corners of the internet that won't play too badly in and if not, at least she knows her parents love her enough to let a shady production company exploit her sexually.

CJ FAM - "ORDINARY POP STAR"

Turns out CJ Fam isn't a southern rap collective from 1996 who no one had ever heard of until some Dutch guy uploaded their entire discography to Sendspace, she's actually a pre-teen pop star who looks like Steve Bruce. For those who are convinced that Ark Music is some elaborate meta joke, this is their smoking gun as it actually sounds OK and has a "MAYBE POP DREAMS COULD TURN OUT TO BE POP NIGHTMARES EVER THINK ABOUT THAT?" vibe to it.

Meme potential: The scene where Fat Usher and his friend Jam Master Jay nod sagely at a computer screen could be edited to show them nodding at stuff that's more inappropriate than a six-year-old trying to be sexy because she saw it on TV, although it's hard to think what. The real star here is at 1:38, the little boy in the red shirt suffering a bout of Larry Grayson-esque limp wrist flapping. Mark my words: He will be the last man standing from Ark Music, towering triumphantly over Rebecca Black's fallen body while waving a movie deal or TV contract in his excited little arms.

DOM PASSANTINO