When Rebecca Black approaches the decks on the Boiler Room: DC livestream, she doesn’t start her DJ set so much as cannonball into it with a pounding techno edit of Hannah Montana’s "Everybody Makes Mistakes."
The crowd is packed shoulder-to-shoulder for Black's first performance at the legendary event series, and she keeps the pace fast and sweaty. She’s far from the girl the internet met in 2011, but as she mixes tracks like Joy Orbison’s "flight fm" and Yaeji’s "booboo" with edits of *NSYNC and Gwen Stefani, past and present collide. Black closes her set with her infamous song "Friday" — but not the way people remember it. Instead, its acapella floats over the opalescent instrumental of Charli xcx’s "360," and when that infamous chorus hits, the crowd sings it back. No irony, just joy.
"The energy was crazy," Black tells GRAMMY.com of her Boiler Room set. "It was honestly one of the best times I've ever had DJing." On social media, widespread clips triggered discourse; some called it "iconic"; others were not as impressed. One prominent DJ declared, "That’s it. Boiler Rooms are dead." Black, unfazed, invited them to her next show.
Black knows what it’s like to be caught in the web of strangers’ opinions. She was 13 when "Friday" blew up on YouTube, making her both famous and a punchline overnight. For a long time, she resented it and was eager to prove everyone wrong. Now 27, the singer/songwriter says her perspective has changed. "My focus shifted to, I'm going to focus on finding an audience that sees me for who I am. They're not looking for me to prove anything other than that I can make something great."
That freedom from expectation defines Black’s new EP Salvation (out now), her most self-assured work yet. Where past projects wrestled with reinvention, Salvation doesn’t second-guess itself — it thrives in its own chaos at the intersection of club euphoria and emotional rawness. "Every project is two years of my life that I put my full heart and pussy into," she says. "If I don't do it with a healthy dose of fearlessness or vulnerability, why did I just waste my time?"
Black lets those unpolished, unhinged and tender parts she once suppressed take over, her emotions as amplified as the songs’ production. She shrugs off external saviors over the title track’s euphoric trance chorus, smirking as she declares she’s already saved herself. Breaking her heart is a capital crime on "Twist The Knife," where orchestral instrumentation deepens the drama.
The creative control Black wields now was not always within reach. Despite the overwhelming backlash against Friday, she spent the next two years releasing a string of similar singles, even though they didn’t resonate with her. In an interview with Buzzfeed, she said her then-manager, who controlled her public persona, wouldn't let her write her own songs. After firing that manager in 2013, Black launched a YouTube channel where slice-of-life vlogs and Q&A sessions provided an outlet for her to connect with fans and show people she was a whole person, not just a headline. Meanwhile, she planned her return.
Black’s 2017 debut EP, RE/BL, was her first creative breakthrough where she sang about subjects that felt real to her, such ase escaping toxic people and self-acceptance. Yet she points to her 2021 EP, Rebecca Black Was Here, as the genesis of her current artistry. She had total control, assembling a new team of songwriters and producers that matched her wavelength. "As soon as I found the people that made it so cathartic, fun, and free to make music with, I couldn't stop writing," Black says.
Where RE/BL was soft, RBWH pulsed with maximalist hyperpop, a fitting backdrop for her newfound artistic freedom. Black also came out as queer the year prior, and filled RBWH with songs reflecting that identity. Songs with same-sex pronouns, like the aching "Personal" and bubbly "Girlfriend," further helped Black find her voice and audience. The warm response cemented Black's creative process: "Go into the studio with the purpose of creating something you love and follow that as far as it goes."
If RBWH was a reintroduction, Black’s 2023 debut full-length Let Her Burn was a spiritual ecdysis. "It’s about taking all of the negativity and everything I’ve been through, and burning it all to the ground," she told Remezcla, "but also letting the person I am now burn brightly."
Black laid herself bare throughout the writing process, excavating her emotions and exploring every idea that popped into her head. That open mindset spawned a dark pop album that spanned genre and subject matter: confronting her inner critic over drum & bass on "Destroy Me"; sugar-coated lust over 808s on "Doe Eyed"; ‘80s synthpop for the gut punch of seeing an ex move on in "Sick To My Stomach." Beautifully and painfully human, Let Her Burn completed a catharsis years in the making.
From that catharsis, Salvation brings liberation. Before the EP took shape, Black knew she wanted it to be the antithesis of her previous release. "Let Her Burn was such a world of experimentation," she tells GRAMMY.com. "Wherever I went after that, I wanted it to feel succinct and cohesive."
If Let Her Burn found comfort in softness and shadows, Salvation is loud and brash. Black wrote it during a period of personal upheaval. "I was lashing out for the first time in my life," she recalls. "It showed me parts of myself that I didn't even know existed. This time, I didn't push them down. I let them out."
Taking the guardrails off of her creative process also unlocked new techniques. Black wields silence as an instrument on the intimate "Tears in My Pocket," a track she calls pivotal to the EP because it taught her that songs can be both minimal and impactful.
As emotionally intense as she is throughout Salvation, she’s just as comfortable indulging in playful absurdity. She layers sticky hooks into "Sugar Water Cyanide" ("Bass go ba rump pump pum!") and "TRUST!" ("Ooh la la, get me going like ga ga ga"). In the latter’s music video, she puts herself on trial in the court of public opinion for her teenaged viral fame — an ultimate act of reclamation, and a reminder that the only judgment that matters is her own.
Rebecca Black has spent over a decade evolving: burning down past versions of herself, rebuilding stronger each time, and realizing she never needed saving in the first place. She’s long past chasing redemption, but one thing that’s never changed is her commitment to the music itself.
"I think the sanctity of making art you love is always worth fighting for," she says. "Nobody could ever tell me differently."