The internet’s reigning main pop girl, Sabrina Carpenter, is heading back on the road—and she’s bringing our next main pop girl with her. In July 2024, indie pop artist Rachel Chinouriri announced she would be opening for Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet UK/EU tour dates. “WE MANIFESTED THIS ONE DARLINGS,” she wrote on Instagram, captioning a screenshot of her campaigning for the tour opener spot in Carpenter’s DMs.
When it comes to Chinouriri’s budding career, it’s accurate to say she’s working late cause she’s a singer—working hard to assert herself into the indie pop scene as a Black female artist. In August 2024, a tweet celebrating young female pop stars—featuring photos of Carpenter, Tate McRae, Chappell Roan, and Olivia Rodrigo—went viral. “Pop music is in good hands,” it read. While these four women absolutely deserve recognition for their talent and hard work, this post prompted a discussion about the lack of representation of Black women in our new generation of main pop girls. “We need a new Black pop star immediately,” one user wrote. Chinouriri took this as her cue: She replied to the tweet with an uncaptioned clip of her single, “Never Need Me,” and it earned 6.7 million views. Pop star power move.
This wasn’t the first time she grabbed the internet’s attention. In 2022, she went TikTok viral for a seven-second clip of her single, “All I Ever Asked.” At the time, Chinouriri was posting her own videos to promote the song before its release, and the internet rallied behind her. One short scroll under the sound on TikTok reveals thousands of users dancing, singing, and showing off their outfits to the song—many of them Black women expressing in their video captions the importance of sticking up for each other. Although unreleased, “All I Ever Asked” became a social media anthem for Black women’s sisterhood.
In May 2024, Chinouriri released her breathtaking debut album, What a Devastating Turn of Events. It’s a confessional of growing up a Black girl in London, soundtracked by electric and melancholic instrumentals. On the vulnerable track, “I Hate Myself,” she tackles how racism and disordered eating influenced her self-image: “They say looks can kill and they almost did / Too big, too small, I’ll never win / I hate myself, I hate my skin.”
On other songs, she’s more tongue-in-cheek. She describes having cloudy judgment in a relationship on the humorous “Dumb Bitch Juice”: “I’ll be giving it the same excuse / That he looks so good / And my friends tell me ‘no’ / But I keep sipping on this dumb bitch juice.”
Despite only having released her debut album, Chinouriri has proved herself to be pop star perfection. She’s a resilient hard worker and self-starter, unabashedly promoting her music to anyone within the internet’s reach. She’s fearlessly confessional in her lyrics, having perfected the art of turning an autobiographical song into a mirror for its listener. She undoubtedly deserves a seat at the main pop girl table next to artists like Carpenter and Roan, but this seat is long overdue. In a disproportionately white new generation of pop, Chinouriri’s music inspires Black women and girls to celebrate themselves and look out for each other. Her seat at the table is theirs too.
On the Short n’ Sweet Tour with Carpenter this spring, Chinouriri will play to some of her biggest audiences yet, including two nights at the O2 Arena in her hometown, London. Thousands of Sabrina Carpenter fans will be decked out in their heels and corsets, anticipating a night with their favorite main pop girl. They may not know it yet, but it won’t be one main pop girl taking the stage; with Rachel Chinouriri in the house, it’s two.