Rachel Chinouriri Writes the Kind of Feelings Most People Try to Dodge

Mar 4 2020 · 3min

Rachel Chinouriri is one of those artists whose music seems to arrive already carrying emotional memory. By March 2020, she had released the Mama’s Boy EP in 2019 and followed it with songs like “Where Do I Go?”, while also being named among NME’s essential new artists for 2020.

What I appreciate most about Rachel is that she does not confuse sadness with blur. A lot of melancholy songwriting gets praised simply for being gentle and personal, even when it is actually quite vague. Rachel Chinouriri is more precise than that. Her songs feel emotionally open, yes, but they are also built on detail. There is shape to the sorrow. There are images, decisions, and turns of phrase that give the feeling somewhere specific to live.

Vocally, she has that rare quality of sounding both close and composed. The intimacy is real, but it is not unedited. She knows how to deliver a line so that it feels confessional without slipping into excess. That balance matters. Too much polish and the heart goes missing. Too much rawness and the song can lose form. Rachel tends to find the middle.

I also think there is something especially affecting about the way her music holds fragility without romanticising collapse. That may sound like a small distinction, but it is not. We live in a time when emotional damage can get aestheticised very quickly, especially in online music culture. Rachel’s work feels more grounded than that. It is sad sometimes, but it is not posing as sadness. It feels lived.

The songwriting also carries a kind of patience that I admire. She is not crowding every second with significance. She lets the feeling unfold. That can seem understated on a first listen, but it is often what gives songs a second and third life. Music that reveals itself slowly tends to age better than music that announces everything in neon on contact.

If I am curious about anything, it is how she might expand the sonic palette over time without losing the clarity that makes the current material so effective. The emotional core is there. The writing is there. The next leap may simply be finding broader settings for those strengths. But even in this relatively early stage, the identity is already strong enough that I trust her with that evolution.

What I would not want is for the industry to mistake her subtlety for smallness. Rachel Chinouriri is not a minor artist because she is not loud. She is not lightweight because she is tender. Some of the best songwriters in any generation are the ones who can make quiet songs feel structurally serious. She has that ability.

There is a lot of music right now designed to catch your attention. Rachel’s music does something more difficult. It earns your care. That usually lasts longer.