Watch Reneé Rapp speak about herself in interviews, and two issues shortly change into clear: that she fucks, and that she offers none. By her stints in youth theater (say howdy 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 Vainness Truthful. Throughout a memorable press junket look selling the 2024 Imply Women film musical, Rapp took the “asshole” proprietor of a tour bus firm to activity whereas her co-star buried his head in his palms: “When you’re watching this, I can’t stand you and I hope what you are promoting burns.”
The stunts round Rapp’s 2023 studio debut, Snow Angel—like an commercial for an influence ballad referred to as “I Hate Boston” on a billboard in Boston’s North Finish—regularly outmatched the character of the songs themselves. Her new album, BITE ME, needs to vary that. “My ex walked in and my different ex together with her,” Rapp deadpans on “Go away Me Alone,” the buzzy, bratty lead single. “The three of us collectively, that’s an actual tongue tornado!”
Stunning no queer individual, queer love and relationship are fertile floor for the type 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: “In some way we at all times find yourself bare/Nothing ever occurs, however it nonetheless feels actual good.” Caught between blasé indifference and emotional undressing, she’s the kind who can knot a cherry stem together with her tongue however usually leads to 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 ultimate refrain of “That’s So Humorous” is ready 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 shouldn’t be at all times an alternative to style. Higher are the tracks the place Rapp can flex her performing chops: On “Mad,” she will barely maintain again a smirk, and her breathy confession that “I believe we nearly made a child/I imply we will’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?
