Reneé Rapp: Bite Me review – Killer closer reverses so-so second album out of its tailspin

Irish Times

5 days ago

Bite Me
    
Artist
:
Reneé Rapp
Label
:
Interscope
Reneé Rapp rappels into the late summer of 2025 touting a reputation as pop's most outrageous newcomer, an off-the-leash bad girl who will say anything, regardless of the consequences.
It's a great marketing hook, though she seems to have embroiled herself in little scandal beyond a comment about being 'ageist' against Millennials. Millennials will get over it, I'm sure – it's certainly a long way from
Ozzy Osbourne
biting the heads off bats or Madonna biting the heads off journalists.
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But if rumours of a 'Rapp girl summer' are overstated, what is there to distinguish the 25-year-old North Carolina songwriter from the dozens of other artists lined up to fill the gap temporarily vacated by Taylor Swift, Harry Styles and others? The answer is not immediately forthcoming on Bite Me, an energetic yet often toothless second album that swings, wildly at times, between inspired and disposable.
Rapp's best songs are fantastic, simultaneously haunting, punchy and stoked with lip-curled wit. Consistency is an issue, however, and the middle third of this album descends into a morass of vapid love songs and break-up dirges, a pop purgatory where AutoTune meets autopilot.
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It's a shame the quality control isn't better, because Bite Me begins with a vibrant blast of punk-pop in the single Leave Me Alone. It's a glammy stomper on which Rapp pokes fun at her past life as an actor and her abrupt departure from the Mindy Kaling dramedy
Sex Lives of College Girls
('I took my sex life with me / now the show ain't f***ing').
She knows the importance of switching things up, too, veering towards
Olivia Rodrigo
's tragic cheerleader iconography on Mad (its chanting hook a cousin once removed of the chorus of Rodrigo's Deja Vu). She then pivots from shouty to sublime on the gorgeous Sometimes, a raw-boned ballad that showcases aching vocals and unfiltered lyrics ('you tell me you love me / tell me you care / bring me to the party / and leave me stranded there').
Rapp is also that rare modern star equally accomplished on stage and screen. Her big break came when she inherited the Rachel McAdams part of Regina George, the lunchroom bully, in the Broadway adaptation of Tina Fey's Mean Girls. But she struggled with the spotlight and developed an eating disorder. The situation grew so severe that her parents flew to New York to encourage her to leave the production, although the arrival of Covid shortly afterwards spared Rapp from agonising over whether to stay. (She subsequently returned for the movie version of the musical.)
That was followed by The Sex Lives of College Girls, where she stole the show as a closeted rich kid, Leighton. She was uninterested in pursuing fame for its own sake, however, and left after two seasons. (The series struggled without her and was cancelled shortly afterwards.)
She explained that she had never wanted acting to be her principal occupation, and was getting out before it eclipsed her music career. She thought, ''I can do music on the side, like, I can just hustle.' And now I've just kept acting, because it keeps supporting the music,' she
told
Variety. 'Acting was my way into tricking everyone that I warranted attention.'
It was a brave decision, but one she has vindicated. With her 2023 debut, Snow Angel, she demonstrated that she had both the outsize personality and the musical talent to cut it as a pop artist in a crowded field. With the follow-up she is once again swinging big – and when she connects, she does so with a satisfying thwack.
What a shame, then, that the record cannot keep up its early pace. The standard slips after the striking Sometimes – and it's a long, regrettable plunge towards mediocrity. She slopes through the motions on the deadeye disco of Kiss It Kiss It and the puny power ballad Good Girl, which wants to be 1980s so desperately that you can almost smell Bonnie Tyler's hairspray.
Elsewhere, the derivative shoutfest At Least I'm Hot suggests a performer trying to re-create a
Charli XCX
hit from memory, while the bland R&B excursion I Think I Like You Better When You're Gone feels like a
Beyoncé
pastiche from someone who doesn't much enjoy Beyoncé.
There is one final twist, however. Bite Me reverses out of its tailspin with the grunge-infused You'd Like That Wouldn't You. Shiny and stomping, it weaves a killer melody into pop gold. It's a gripping ending to a so-so album, and pinpoints Rapp – not quite the finished article – as an artist to watch.