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The line between actors and pop stars has always been a porous one. Cher being the OG, then latterly Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande (who got her start as a Disney child star) have taken breaks from pumping out albums to moonlight on the silver screen.
But Reneé Rapp has always been clear that being a singer is what she wants the most. She got her start on Broadway in the production of the Mean Girls musical, before reprising her sapphic take on queen bee Regina George in the movie adaptation. Her original song Not My Fault, a collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion, charted in the UK but didn’t qute break the Top 100 in the US.
Rapp then starred in Mindy Kaling’s HBO Max show The Sex Lives of College Girls, before quitting in 2023 to hard launch her music career with her first album, Snow Angel. Bite Me, her sophomore album, is a response to the pressure she felt coming off tour and feeling pressured to pump out more tracks. Leave Me Alone, the album’s first single and opening track, alchemises this relatable rage. She even takes a cheeky pop at Kaling’s show with the line “I took my sex life with me, now the show ain’t f****n’”. Ouch.
With some of the tracks there’s a sense that Rapp still hasn’t quite found her USP yet. Blindfold me and I’m not sure I could confidently identify a Rapp song with the speed I could the current main pop girlies. But she has range, both vocally and stylistically. This is a sizzle reel of Rapp’s ability to be snarling, scorned and sexy one minute, floating high on new love the next.
Kiss It Kiss It has a groovy retro vibe with a level of sexual innuendo — “You’re going to kill me if you kiss it like that” — that’s very Sabrina Carpenter by way of Billie Eilish’s Lunch. At Least I’m Hot has shades of Lizzo. Mad channels Olivia Rodrigo’s brand of pop punk revival. “All of that time you wasted being mad” she spits as she lists preferable alternative activities — “we could have been having sex” — to arguing. “I wanna get mad at you/ Right back at you/ But it’s kinda hot” she purrs.
This is when music truly hits, when it allows her personality to shine through with cutting remarks and snappy one-liners. Rapp’s whole media personality is a studied refusal to be polished, winning legions of adoring online fans with her candour and crash outs. She may have turned her back on acting, but Rapp knows how to deliver a line flawlessly.
Fans will, of course, be interrogating every lyric for hints of lesbian drama (Rapp came out in 2024, having formerly identified as bisexual). Before she went went red carpet official with girlfriend Towa Bird, Rapp was dating TikTok personality Alissa Carrington. Bird, also a musician, opened for Rapp during her Snow Hard Feelings tour.
Several tracks could be read as a post-mortem on her break-up with Carrington. The R&B style I Think I Like You Better When You’re Gone appears to track a long distance relationship falling apart: “I’ve got a funny feeling something’s wrong,” Rapp foreshadows with all the subtly of an unsubtle thing. In You’d Like That Wouldn’t You Rapp puts on a comedy old-timey voice while pretending to placating a lover pretending to “swear that I would never, ever cheat” before the stone cold reminder that “the thought of getting back together makes me want to die alone”.
Hot, mean and funny is Rapp’s brand, and some of her best work is when she fully lets rip. Shy, dedicated to her courtship with Bird is sexy with a soupçon of the Spice Girls as shots are fired. “Cross my heart and hope to die/ Somewhere in-between your thighs/ I wanna mark it up like X and O/ ‘Cause baby I’ll do things your exes won’t”. Savage, but who doesn’t love drama.
It’s not a perfect album, but I have a strong sense it will be an absolute hoot performed live on her 2026 European tour. A line like “Even line my lips to match my nipples” needs to be sung at a stadium full of screaming horny queers. I hope Rapp keeps following her dream to prioritise her pop career and keep making albums with the filter entirely off.
Bite Me is out now with Polydor Records.
