Rebecca Black says she's always known that one day, wider audiences would tune in to queer pop. It's just better than straight pop. "I definitely have a gay superiority complex myself, so I've always known that there was so much potential in these artists," the queer singer asserts.
Now that singers like Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish, and Doechii are having mainstream hits, Black is excited that bigger and wider audiences are getting into queer music.
"It would be really depressing if you were only digestible to other gay people because gay people have digested so much hetero content over the years and found so much resonance and relatability within it," she says. "I think the brain is just bigger than that for all of us."
Black, first known for going viral with the song "Friday" when she was just 13, established herself as an adult artist with the 2021 song "Girlfriend" about a relationship with a woman, and released her first album, the gay club classic Let Her Burn, in 2023. Cut to 2025, and she's back with her first new music since then: the seven-song dance pop project SALVATION, now available on all music streaming services.
Black, 27, has been in the music industry for over a decade, and is now getting to do it on her own terms, singing proudly about her relationships, messiness, and being a woman who owns who she is. She's a long way from "Friday," looking clearly and boldly into the future.
Rebecca BlackDanica Robinson
Having burst onto the music scene at such a young age, people have had a lot of specific expectations for her for a long time. And she felt like she wasn't able to truly be herself until recently.
"Whether it be in this industry or in our world, we're all holding a lot at once, and I think I gave everybody else but myself that grace all the time," Black says. "I actually felt like I knew so many people so well because of whatever imperfections they allowed me to see, and I realized how little I was allowing everybody else to see [me]. So, really it's just a matter of taking the leash off of myself I think, and allowing myself to act like a 27-year-old for the first time in my life."
Her new project is exactly the kind of party any 27-year-old would kill to be at. It's brash, it's cocky, it's fun, it's sexy, and it goes full throttle ahead. It's the perfect pop escape for people who are struggling to find joy and fun in a world where that is getting increasingly difficult. It's also more mature than any previous project she's released, with songs like "Salvation" and "Do You Even Think About Me" looking introspectively. It's in that dichotomy that Black is finding creative success.
SALVATION also has the sexiness of a woman entering her prime. Rebecca Black knows who she is and what she wants, but she hasn't always felt this confident about her sexuality. Early in her career, as she was growing up, Black's teen body was a topic of conversation for people online "in a way that it never should have been," Black says.
Rebecca BlackDanica Robinson
At first, she dealt with that by hiding her sexuality away, but now that she's able to do her career, and life, on her own terms, she found strength and beauty in it. That confidence oozes out on the new project's sexiest tracks like "TRUST!" and "Sugar Water Cyanide."
"Once I started doing it on my terms in a way that I felt really beautiful and in a way that was sometimes even outlandishly sexy or campy, that was where I started to find a comfortability in my body that I'd never had before," she says, "...and that has become such a source of power for me and such a source of also creativity."
Black has been working in the industry for over half her life, but she still has plenty of people reminding her how young she is, which can be quite confusing. With SALVATION, she's found a balance, and is able to rely on the knowledge and experience she has and enjoy feeling like a newbie again, getting more experimental and extreme with her songs and lyrics.
"I actually really cherish feeling like I'm just starting something. I really cherish the feeling of starting over, or learning again, or just feeling like, 'oh, there's a whole new book to this that I haven't really come across yet,'" she says.
Rebecca BlackDanica Robinson
This new beginning involves her no longer living based on who other people wanted her to be. As a young teen thrust into the spotlight, she didn't have a lot of control over how other people saw her and treated her. Now, she's her own woman, and this growth comes through in her songs.
"I've, for so long I think, felt so comfortable in prioritizing other people's opinions of me above my own, and that was really starting to bleed out in my life," she says. "I think I was really starting to understand how little I even knew about myself and how little I even knew about the person I wanted to be if it was just me alone in a room in a world where there was no one else to tell me what to be."
"So, this album really was me in not just writing sessions, but in my daily life, really starting to confront that and allow myself the freedom to fail I never had, and the freedom to flail as well, to stumble and to maybe be a version of myself that maybe people wouldn't recognize, but that finally felt more at home to me."
Just because she's an adult and looking confidently ahead doesn't mean she's left "Friday" behind forever. When I ask if she's ever going to retire the song from her live shows, she smiles.
"The question comes up every year. This year I have plans for it that I think will be a little bit different from what people might expect, but I would like to reinvent it as much as I can before I put it to bed, and maybe it'll be put to bed and then [have it] brought back out later," she says. "I have no idea. I'm surprised people still want to talk about it."
With projects like Let Her Burn and SALVATION under her belt, people may not be talking about it much longer.
Photographer: Danica Robinson @danicarobinson
Stylist: Dot Bass @dottttbass
Makeup artist: Kye Quinlan @kyequinlan
Hair: Jaz Shepard @jazshepard
PR: Frazes Creative @frazescreative
Rebecca BlackDanica Robinson
Rebecca BlackDanica Robinson
Rebecca BlackDanica Robinson
Rebecca BlackDanica Robinson
Rebecca BlackDanica Robinson
