It’s a Thursday evening, but it spiritually feels like a Friday at Rebecca Black’s sold-out Brooklyn concert. There’s a lack of aluminum deodorant, dancers are making out on stage, and whiffs of weed and poppers hang in the air. All of the girls and gays in the audience are bowing down to the queen of “Friday,” who, with the release of her most recent EP Salvation, now stands as a newly minted pop diva.

While the crowd is probably salivating at the thought of hearing her infamous 2011 track, Black does not perform her song “Friday.” When she first released it 14 years ago, it quickly infected the cultural zeitgeist but also turned her into one of the internet’s first punching bags. She has since reclaimed the song in a different form by playing a hyperpop remix she released in 2021 in her DJ sets. But on the Salvation Tour, the track only plays during the show’s overture.

“The question for myself was, Could I make a show that still felt equally as important and truly as full? Can I make people feel satisfied at the end of the night without performing it?” Black says at Gelso & Grand in Manhattan a day after her show. “For a while, I felt kind of chained to having to perform that song as an obligation.

She’ll come back at some point.” Black, on that Thursday night in Greenpoint, didn’t need “Friday.” She achieved her mission, and guests left satisfied. Murmurs of wonder and awe vibrated at the exit doors, and I personally received a text from a friend in the crowd, reading, “She was insane. A perfect mix of insanely cheesy performance with absolute star power.” Now, at 27, Black is finally having the moment she deserves.

Her album Salvation, which dropped in late February, received positive reviews from critics. Black just wrapped an international tour, and this summer, she is set to perform solo at festivals. Starting tomorrow night, she’ll be joining Katy Perry’s Lifetimes Tour with shows across the country.

There’s a new confidence radiating through Black these days. “I know what I want to get across,” Black says. “I feel like I’m in the room I’m meant to be in.” Kristen Jan Wong According to Black, no one was ever supposed to know about “Friday.” The massively viral song was meant to be an experiment for the then 13-year-old, however, what was supposed to be a bullet point in her career quickly became an all-consuming chapter.

“It happened in a way that was so out of my control,” Black says. In 2011, the video made Black a target for intense online bullying. She was made fun of by late night hosts, dragged in the comments, and probably badmouthed by the person sitting next to you on the train.

Within just a few months of the video’s release, Black became a household name, but it was never in the way she imagined. “The internet was such a dumpster fire at that time,” Black says. “That kind of mass movement [was a bigger deal at the time].

The communities that we have now were just such a different experience. We were all kids. We were all figuring it out.” Black, however, is quick to find a silver lining.

“The isolation it gave me, and the time alone at home, literally becoming a chronically online Tumblr alt girl, built the love I have for music that I just don’t know if I would’ve had,” she says. “Most people maybe would’ve never wanted to come back into the industry. For me, it bred this vision I had for myself and for music.” The moment also afforded Black significant opportunities and exposure.

Her song was performed on Glee, and she received support from Demi Lovato and Lady Gaga. Black was even on set for Mother Monster’s iconic “Judas” music video, as MTV tapped her to interview her choreographer Laurieann Gibson. She mentions the footage is lost in the ether.

Black also formed a close relationship with Katy Perry. An early champion of Black, Perry gave her a starring role in her “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F. )” music video.

She also invited Black to sing “Friday” onstage, and later spent about an hour counseling Black on her career. The two had lost touch, but their relationship rekindled after Black released the lead single from Salvation, “Sugar Water Cyanide,” in December 2024. Perry reached out to share her admiration for the song.

“She’s kind of an early investor,” Black says of Perry’s support. “It’s sweet to see in this moment where pop is full of women at their best, encouraging and embracing each other. I hope that the 2000s era of cutthroat pop girls against each other is done.

The more, the merrier.” Today, Black feels like joining Perry on her Lifetimes Tour is a full-circle moment. Perry was an inspiration for her career, and she commends the “Teenage Dream” singer’s creative prowess. “Say what you want about Witness, but that was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to in my life.

I went twice,” Black says. “She’s always a reference point for me. How can we build these worlds and surprise people in a way that feels really inviting, fun, and has humor?

Those are my favorite shows—arena shows, stadium shows—I would go to one every night if I could.” “Most people maybe would’ve never wanted to come back into the industry. For me, it bred this vision I had for myself and for music.” At the end of her Salvation tour set list that night in Brooklyn, Black performed Perry’s hit “Ur So Gay.” She’d already planned to close some of her shows with the song before she joined the Lifetimes Tour, but officially booking the gig with Perry made it even more special. She called Perry up to ask for her permission.

“She was like, ‘You should do it,’” Black says. “I wanted to re-contextualize that moment. Singing it as a queer person is such a unique experience.” “Ur So Gay” serves as the perfect finale song for Black, who had her own coming out journey years ago.

Growing up around Los Angeles, she found herself surrounded by the LGBTQ+ community. Most notably, she started eagerly waiting until she could finally go to Pride. Her friends at the time would tell her stories of their wild times, and she sat itching for her turn.

“If you can get into that, that is the party of the fucking century,” she says, recalling her yearning for Pride as a teenager. “Everyone is gorgeous and perfect, but crazy things happen.” Kristen Jan Wong When she was 20, she finally attended the festival. Her eyes were opened, and after the weekend, she fell off the face of the planet—a common experience after the rainbow overload.

“The gay agenda got in my system,” she jokes. “The people I was working with were like, ‘What’s going on?’ I was like, ‘I’m still at Pride. I’m banging on the door of Flaming Saddles.’” After that weekend, Black fell more and more in love with queer spaces, clubs, and hyperpop, specifically A.G. Cook and Sophie’s music.

She started incorporating heavier beats and more electronic sounds into her own work, and shortly after, she took a spin into the world of DJing. (She started playing with her ex’s roommate’s controller, and booked her first professional DJ gig a year later.) Now, she has over 2 million views on her Boiler Room set, during which someone famously offered her poppers.

“It was 6 P.M.,” she recalls. “Obviously in the back of my head, going into Boiler Room, I’m like, ‘I would love if someone offered me poppers. That’s iconic.

That’d be so dumb.’ But, I literally was like, ‘Girl, it’s six P.M. What? You’re doing poppers pre-dinner?’” For Black, DJing exercises a different muscle than performing her own music. It lets her explore all the facets of her musical taste and also alleviates some anxiety that can come with her solo performances.

“It’s definitely allowed me to get a lot more comfortable moving on my toes, because you often don’t fully know what’s coming until you’re maybe three minutes away from it,” Black says. “If I’m up there, it’s me and only me, and if I don’t know what that fucking technology is doing, it’s not going to get figured out.” A queen of the club and of the stage, Black’s newest project and tour feel like a declaration of her queer liberation. The title track of Salvation, for example, flips religion on its head.

“Salvation is a term that normally connotes fear and exclusionary attitudes towards queer people, but it has nothing to do with the word itself, it has to do with the people behind it and the meaning behind it,” says Black, who grew up around Catholicism but does not identify with the religion. “The whole idea of God believing that you’re inherently perfect with who you are, it’s real. Queerness is exactly what God intended the world to have.” Kristen Jan Wong At her show, too, Black makes sure she’s creating a safe space and welcoming in all her fans to the fullest extent.

She hopes to do the same on the Lifetimes Tour. “I think I’ve built this trust with everyone who comes in the audience where I feel like I don’t have to say the perfect thing,” she says. “This feels like the most cohesive storytelling I’ve ever done.” Styling by Dot Bass; hair by Gregg Lennon; makeup by Nick Lennon.