[imagesource: YouTube / SarahBrandVEVO]

There’s a three-minute synth-pop song that’s got the internet in a tizzy because the exact details of the song’s creation is a total mystery.

Meanwhile, another song blowing up on the internet at the moment should also have been harder to find.

I am judging Sarah Brand’s ‘Red Dress’ song on YouTube harshly, but then again, that seems to be the point.

The song has well over half a million hits on YouTube, but that’s not necessarily because people are enjoying the video.

In between head-scratching and ear-squinting, the feedback is mostly “centred on making fun of the track or debating whether it is an elaborate hoax”.

That’s according to the BBC, which called the song “divisive”.

As a master’s degree student in sociology at Oxford University, Brand says that she’s achieved almost exactly what she set out to.

Although, she hasn’t exactly confirmed if the video is part of her coursework, which means her ‘goal’ could have been an afterthought when the video started getting attention.

Either way, she proves that judgement is rife, saying that the work was a “cinematic, holistic portrayal of judgement”.

Brand directs, acts (as the girl in the white dress, and the girl in the red dress), and sings in this mediocre production.

Ready to feel the heat? And by that, I mean the red hot urge to run away?

Brand readily admits that she is “no professional singer”, adding that:

The video is filmed at Saint Michael at North Gate Church in Oxford, with other actors and extras in the mix.

Brand, who says she is less interested in singing than she is in directing in writing, mentioned that she was “impressed” by “some very, very witty comments”:

The A.V. Club said the video invited a “kind of car wreck curiosity”, while Newsweek debated whether it was part of a “grand social experiment”.

One YouTube commenter wrote: “She is actually hitting all the notes… only of other songs. And at random.”

A screenshot from YouTube shows more “witty” comments:

Image: YouTube

I wonder if she took any notes from 2011’s most cringe song, ‘Friday’ by Rebecca Black?

[source:bbc]