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What a Devastating Turn of Events is the debut studio album by English singer-songwriter Rachel Chinouriri. It was released on 3 May 2024 through Parlophone, with distribution from Atlas Artists.
The album was supported by four promotional singles: "The Hills", "Never Need Me", "What a Devastating Turn of Events" and "It Is What It Is".
Chinouriri began working on her debut album in 2022, shortly after the release of her mini-album Four° In Winter; in between the studio sessions, she went on tour both as a headliner, in the UK and the US, and as a supporting act for Lewis Capaldi (during his Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent Tour) and Louis Tomlinson (during the European leg of his Faith in the Future World Tour).
The album's creative process took place between Forestdale, Hereford, and Los Angeles, with collaborators including Rich Turvey, Kenny Beats, Aaron Shadrow, and Glen Roberts. Chinouriri started writing and recording songs in England in early 2023 when she traveled to Los Angeles and stayed in the city for over a month, to avoid multiple plane trips due to her fear of flying. However, she struggled to settle in the American city and connect creatively with other artists, aspects that had a negative impact on her mental health and the quality of her work. As a result, she decided to move back to London to complete the record.
Chinouriri mainly defined What a Devastating Turn of Events as an indie rock album, and stated that she wanted to recreate the visual and sonic aesthetics of the Britpop movement in the 1990s and 2000s while reclaiming her position in the indie scene, where Black female artists were still underrepresented. She cited artists such as Oasis, The Libertines, Coldplay, Noisettes, and V V Brown as some of the sources of inspiration for the style she had adopted while writing the album.
The album is thematically split in two sections, with the former including mostly lighter tracks, and the latter being made of songs that tackle heavier and darker topics. Chinouriri told DIY the choice was intentional, saying quote:
"The tracklist is meant to replicate what I felt when I was growing up as a kid. Life could be super normal, but you're always anticipating something major to happen, … whether it was traumatic, whether it was a fight, whether it was an argument or, as I was raised in an all-white neighbourhood, whether it was a racism thing. I was always looking over my shoulder, anticipating something could happen, but it would always happen when I least expected it. I wanted the album to convey this false sense of security, as you pass through the lighter first half, then suddenly… boom! You've been hit with a very deep and dark song, and then everything changes…"
The record's themes include references to the artist's feelings of frustration towards her experience in Los Angeles ("The Hills"), her past love relationships ("Never Need Me" and "Dumb Bitch Juice") and close people she fell out with ("All I Ever Asked" and "It Is What It Is"), as well as the loss of a relative in Zimbabwe who died by suicide after finding out she was pregnant (the title track) and body dysmorphia ("I Hate Myself").
The lead single from the album, "The Hills", was released on 12 October 2023, along with its accompanying music video. On 15 January 2024, Chinouriri revealed the album's title during a cover interview with NME; she then shared the tracklist and artwork of What a Devastating Turn of Events three days later, while releasing the second single "Never Need Me", accompanied by a music video starring the artist herself and Florence Pugh. The album's title track was released as the third single on 28 February of the same year, with its accompanying music video being shared on 18 March. The fourth and final promotional single from the album, "It Is What It Is", was released on 19 April, along with a visualizer.
The album also contained two previous singles by Chinouriri: the acoustic version of the 2018 single "So My Darling", which was originally released in January 2022 following the rise in popularity of the original song on TikTok, and "All I Ever Asked", released in March of the same year and originally included in her 2022 EP Better Off Without, before being shared by Sophie Turner in her Instagram Stories and subsequently go viral in December 2023.
In the build-up to the album's release, Chinouriri played a series of in-store shows across the UK in February 2024, before doing three more gigs the following month, respectively, at the KOKO in London, in Brooklyn, New York, and at The Echo in Los Angeles.
The album's artwork was revealed upon its announcement on 18 January 2024, Shot by Yana Van Nuffel, it depicts Chinouriri in multiple poses both inside and in front of a council estate festooned with St George's Cross bunting, as a reference to the flag of England. The artist told The Guardian that she decided to include the English flag in the cover art as "a celebration" of her British identity in spite of the racist abuse she faced growing up, saying quote: "No matter the trauma I've had from being raised in the UK, being Black British and being the only Black person in my neighbourhood, it’s made me the person who I am".
The cover art's purpose was the subject of controversy, with Black studies professor Kehinde Andrews telling the BBC's Newsbeat that he would "question why anybody want to reclaim something which is so connected to whiteness", in reference to systemic racism in the UK and the cultural appropriation of the English flag by the nationalist far-right. While acknowledging the criticism, Chinouriri stated that "if art kind of makes you turn your head a little bit, it's doing the right thing".
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