Watch Reneé Rapp discuss herself in interviews, and two issues rapidly grow to be clear: that she fucks, and that she offers none. By way of her stints in youth theater (say hiya to your 2018 Jimmy Awards winner), Broadway, Hollywood, and aspirant pop stardom, the 25-year-old singer from Huntersville, North Carolina has maintained a sharp-edged aversion to media coaching of any kind; “individuals have tried,” she just lately instructed Self-importance Truthful. Throughout a memorable press junket look selling the 2024 Imply Ladies film musical, Rapp took the “asshole” proprietor of a tour bus firm to activity whereas her co-star buried his head in his palms: “For those who’re watching this, I can’t stand you and I hope your online business burns.”
The stunts round Rapp’s 2023 studio debut, Snow Angel—like an commercial for an influence ballad known as “I Hate Boston” on a billboard in Boston’s North Finish—steadily outmatched the character of the songs themselves. Her new album, BITE ME, desires to alter that. “My ex walked in and my different ex along with her,” Rapp deadpans on “Depart Me Alone,” the buzzy, bratty lead single. “The three of us collectively, that’s an actual tongue tornado!”
Shocking no queer individual, queer love and relationship are fertile floor for the form of sticky conditions that thrive in pop songwriting. To the coffeeshop strums of “I Can’t Have You Round Me Anymore,” Rapp particulars a sequence of compromising encounters with a not-quite-friend, not-quite-lover: “By some means we all the time find yourself bare/Nothing ever occurs, nevertheless it nonetheless feels actual good.” Caught between blasé indifference and emotional undressing, she’s the kind who can knot a cherry stem along with her tongue however usually results in a tangle.
Rapp is a vocal powerhouse, however BITE ME tends to waste her abilities on its most maudlin ballads. Her exceptional belting within the prolonged last refrain of “That’s So Humorous” is about in opposition to a piano chorus that sounds prefer it was plinked out by a center schooler on the household child grand. “Why Is She Nonetheless Right here?” is a Winehouse-lite torch track of the type that landed RAYE on the awards present circuit, and proof that uncooked expertise just isn’t all the time an alternative choice to style. Higher are the tracks the place Rapp can flex her performing chops: On “Mad,” she will be able to barely maintain again a smirk, and her breathy confession that “I feel we virtually made a child/I imply we are able to’t, however we got here so shut” drags “Kiss It Kiss It” simply past the blander aspect of disco-country. Solely the generic ’80s synth-pop of “Good Lady” wholly resists Rapp’s charms; since when would she promise to have one drink then name it an evening?