Online abuse troubled singer Rebecca Black for years
At the age of 13, Rebecca Black's music video, Friday, became a worldwide viral hit for all the wrong reasons.
By Dan MaudsleyBBC Radio 5 live Now, aged 20, she has told BBC Radio 5 live that it's taken her years to get over the trolling she received. Friday was released on YouTube back in 2011. It was dubbed "the world's worst song" by critics, and quickly became one of the site's most disliked videos, attracting thousands of comments from internet trolls. Rebecca said it hasn't been easy to shake off the abuse: "I saw everything. When I started reading those negative comments I just couldn't stop - I just kept going and going and going. "People commenting don't think a real person has to read this and move on with their day." Rebecca revealed she hadn't actually seen the video before it went live: "I saw it the minute it went on YouTube like everyone else. "We thought, 'it's not like this is going to go anywhere'. It's not like I thought the whole world was going to see it and pick it apart." Rebecca's video racked up millions of views but the reception was mainly negative with hundreds of thousands of abusive comments - including a death threat which police investigated. "I felt like I had the biggest 'kick me' sign on my back and everyone was just lining up before they'd even looked at me," she said. "I just had to breathe it all in, suck it up and be good. And doing that while everyone is just constantly ripping away at every piece of you, you are left with bones, you're left with nothing." Moving on Rebecca said it was only after processing the abuse that she felt able to resume her career. "It was like being able to put your head above water. I could talk about something that wasn't Friday. "You can make anything happen once you get back to a little sliver of strength. Day by day you can have a moment of relief." She thinks her new single, Satellite, is more authentic: "I was 100,000% proud to put my name on it and feel like it is absolutely me. "It was like, 'there she is - there's the girl', You can be the girl that the internet deems has the worst song ever and years later still say, 'I love music'."