Culture
Rebecca Black talks ‘SALVATION’, DJing, and building a fan base with WOUB
By: Nicholas Kobe
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) – Rebecca Black’s Friday took the world by storm in 2011, with its music video becoming one of the first viral YouTube sensations. The track’s popularity was sadly accompanied by a wave of hate towards the then 13-year-old Black.
Regardless, Black continued to release music throughout the 2010s before dramatically changing her sound and releasing a plethora of singles through 2020 and 2021. This included a hyperpop take on Friday with Dorian Electra, 3OH!3, and Big Freedia.
Fresh off her viral Boiler Room set last year, Black just released her sophomore album, SALVATION.
Black spoke with WOUB’s Nicholas Kobe as she heads out on the album’s (almost entirely sold out) tour. Find a transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.
Nicholas Kobe: How would you describe your music in one sentence to someone who has never heard it?
Rebecca Black: I would say – right now – it’s loud and bright, but overall it can kind of go anywhere.
What’s led you in that direction?
Black: I think my journey for the last few years has been about experimenting with different sounds and trying to find my footing and make music that isn’t easy to define. With SALVATION, I wanted to create a project that felt cohesive and I had no idea what that would mean or what kind of world I would live within before I started it, or even when I started the writing process. Once I found the sounds that live in Tears In My Pockets and some of the more brash synth lines, I felt like I was finding an exciting new sound for myself that also felt unapologetically pop.
You said you didn’t really know what was going to happen going into making SALVATION. How did you find those ideas?
Black: Just by exploring a lot of different avenues. There was about a year of doing sessions leading up to the one where I made Tears In My Pocket. I tried exploring more organic sounds and softer sounds and exploring kind of everything. It was during the session in which we wrote Tears [In My Pocket] where we went down a lane that I’d never really gone towards before sonically, but it still kind of bled into this dance music world, which has also been such a big part of my life for so long.
You mentioned electronic music, you’ve also been doing some DJing. How has that affected the music on SALVATION?
Black: DJing has been a part of my life for so long now that I don’t remember a world where it didn’t exist alongside of it. I think that in the last year, it’s become more a part of what I’m publicly recognized for. The reason I DJ is because I love dance music. I love to curate the experience of a night out, of a night in general. And I only play what I like, so I guess there’s a natural synergy there in terms of what I’m listening to at any given point in time.
What excites you most about performing for the fan base you’ve built as you’ve shifted your sound?
Black: I have so much fun making the worlds that I get to build and where I’ve gone with the last project and emulating those on stage is a really fun challenge. There are a lot of different ways to build a world creatively with the resources I have, and that’s what I have fun doing alongside actually just playing the shows themselves. I get excited to create all the little different pieces and props and wardrobe pieces and sets and visuals that make it all feel cohesive.
What inspired SALVATION‘s aesthetics? Like the album cover, the music videos, or some of these props and sets that you’re going to bring out on tour?
Black: It all stemmed from the overall message of the project, which is about trusting your intuition. It’s about going your own way versus what everyone else might think that you’re supposed to do. It definitely is born out of ideas related to sort of embracing the delusions of grandeur that I’ve always been afraid to embrace in my real life, even if just by taking up a lot of space visually.
Can you tell me about any challenges you faced so far as following up Let Her Burn? Or any lessons in general you took from that album cycle?
Black: After I had finished writing my last project, I kept trying to push forward, but it just felt like I was making B sides for an album I’d already made. So for Let Her Burn, there was about a year in between finishing the album and actually releasing it. It was around the time that the debut album came out that I had the first sessions for this project, and that’s when I really started to write songs that felt like an evolution forward, and once we found that evolution and once I got the first few songs, this world felt the easiest to build out of anything I’ve done before.