Finding SALVATION

Rebecca Black has plunged into introspective depths and emerged reborn. The resulting project, her latest EP, is a relentlessly danceable (if familiar) run of songs.

You have to hand it to Lady Gaga: almost two decades after she burst onto the scene, her influence continues to make itself apparent. You can see it in Chappell Roan’s outspoken activism for queer rights; Sabrina Carpenter’s winkingly camp performances; even Beyoncé’s grand visuals owe a debt to Gaga and her commitment to taking the art of the music video seriously.

Rebecca Black is the latest pop star to cite Mother Monster as an inspiration, and Gaga’s spirit is indeed baked into Black’s newest EP, SALVATION. It comes from a place of sentiment – Gaga was one of Black’s fiercest defenders upon the release of the latter’s much-maligned single ‘Friday’ – and as such you hear traces of her in the lyrics here. Black touches on several familiar Gaga themes: queering religious narratives on the title track; objectification on ‘American Doll’; love-as-antidote on ‘Tears in my Pocket’.

But Black’s EP somewhat distinguishes itself from Gaga’s work, too; if it’s not terribly original in its lyrical and sonic presentation, it advances Black’s profile as a pop star whose chief concern is getting you to shake ass. Simply put: SALVATION is familiar, but it’s also fun as hell.

From the off, Black plonks the listener in the passenger seat and floors it all the way down Rainbow Road. Opener and title track ‘Salvation’ is a viscerally sensual piece of dance-pop, the first of several tracks that celebrate queer intimacy; in particular, Black’s reclamation of religious salvation for her own context is especially valuable in a time when queer rights, particularly in Black’s home country of the US, are being steamrolled. It’s an added bonus, then, that such an emotionally significant track comes packaged in such a sugary pop package.

Stronger still is ‘Do You Even Think About Me’, a spiritual sequel to Black’s 2023 album Let Her Burn. Where that album enabled Black to shed her skin and interrogate her own persona, here she shifts her gaze outward to the audience that was so eager to mock her amid the ‘Friday’ debacle. Spectral vocals recite the titular question as the track approaches its coda, with Black rising from the grave to deliver a sermon on the ugly realisation that everyone, at some point, has been someone else’s bully. Again, not groundbreaking stuff, but in the context of Black’s career it feels epiphanic.

The mesmerising, Boiler Room-ready trance of this track and ‘Tears in my Pocket’ supplement the lyrics nicely, but other songs don’t have such luck. ‘American Doll’ – whose sentiment you can probably guess from the title – is undermined by its strutting tempo and breathy vocals. As such, the lyrical content is not only at odds with the instrumental but just comes off as preachy and cliché. One wishes that Black might have reached for a more original angle instead of settling for what’s been established.

But is Black even trying to be original? Does originality inherently equate to quality? These are big questions to apply to a transitional project in this burgeoning artist’s career; for now, the main thing that matters is that the music is immense fun to listen to. ‘TRUST!’ and ‘Sugar Water Cyanide’, two of the lightest songs on the tracklist, hit from start to finish, but even when Black sings about her heartache she sounds like she’s having a whale of a time.

Vowing to keep ‘dancing till I die’ on house-adjacent closer ‘Twist The Knife’, Black would probably be right at home guesting on a standout track from The Fame Monster. But even when paying homage to the divas who’ve come before her, it’s clear that Black has potential to become one all by herself.

7/10