Watch Reneé Rapp speak about herself in interviews, and two issues shortly turn out to be clear: that she fucks, and that she offers none. By means of 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 type; “individuals have tried,” she not too long ago advised Vainness 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 process whereas her co-star buried his head in his arms: “Should you’re watching this, I can’t stand you and I hope your corporation 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—ceaselessly 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!”
Shocking no queer particular person, queer love and courting are fertile floor for the sort of sticky conditions that thrive in pop songwriting. To the coffeeshop strums of “I Can’t Have You Round Me Anymore,” Rapp particulars a collection of compromising encounters with a not-quite-friend, not-quite-lover: “One way or the other we all the time find yourself bare/Nothing ever occurs, but it surely 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 typically leads to a tangle.
Rapp is a vocal powerhouse, however BITE ME tends to waste her abilities on its most maudlin ballads. Her outstanding 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 tune of the kind that landed RAYE on the awards present circuit, and proof that uncooked expertise isn’t all the time an alternative 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 believe we virtually 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 Woman” wholly resists Rapp’s charms; since when would she promise to have one drink then name it an evening?
