Rachel Chinouriri Pivots to Synth-Pop on Second Album
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- Rachel Chinouriri is finalizing her second album "I Think I Spoke Too Soon," a pivot from guitar-driven indie to synth-pop drawing on Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Donna Summer, Prince and LCD Soundsystem, with lead single "One Song Away from Crying" designed to "work it out on the floor."
- Chinouriri won best new music at the O2 Silver Clef awards — her first-ever award win, following nominations at the 2025 Brits and 2021 Ivor Novellos; Melanie C followed her on Instagram after the ceremony.
- Chinouriri performed to 45,000 at Wolf Alice's Finsbury Park homecoming show, having previously been selected as support act by Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, Gracie Abrams and Florence + the Machine.
- Chinouriri had her first panic attack in October 2017 while supporting Celeste at London's Laylow members' club, then sang "half crying" — an experience she credits with teaching her that "the catastrophic scenarios in my head rarely come to pass."
- Chinouriri posted on Instagram in 2022: "You see my colour before you hear my music," pushing back against the industry categorizing her music as R&B or soul; she notes she and Cat Burns remain the only Black women regularly booked at UK festivals.
- Chinouriri attended the Brit school in the same year as Olivia Dean and Cat Burns, and grew up in Croydon as the only UK-born sibling of Zimbabwean parents who fought as child soldiers in the war of independence.
Why it matters: Chinouriri's musical pivot from indie guitar to synth-pop is also a commercial one — the danceable, pop-coded direction could broaden her audience beyond the indie circuit that has historically overlooked Black women. Her own observation that she and Cat Burns are still typically the only Black women on UK festival lineups shows both the progress she has driven and how narrow that progress remains.
