Reneé Rapp: Bite Me review — the Joan Jett of modern pop

Times

01-08-2025

An odd thing has happened to mainstream pop. We are entering a new era of deathly dull boy-next-door types singing earnestly about their feelings while ensuring that they don't offend anyone in any way whatsoever. See No 1 stars such as Alex Warren, Benson Boone and other perfectly nice young men with a special ability to sit squarely in the middle of the middle. Perhaps, in an age when some silly thing you said as a teenager in a moment of online rashness can be used as evidence of the fact that you are a horrible human being who must be destroyed, these men are so terrified of being cancelled that they have decided the best approach is to be as boring as possible. Yet the new tranche of female pop stars have gone in the opposite direction.
From Charli XCX capturing the messiness of a night out to Sabrina Carpenter's submissive sexuality ironically or deliberately setting the cause of feminism back a few decades, via Chappell Roan employing a flamboyance once exhibited by male pop stars such as David Bowie and Marc Bolan, it's the women who are pushing their personas to the limit. Add to this list Reneé Rapp, star of a musical version of Mean Girls and the TV show The Sex Lives of College Girls, who is back with a fun, punky album that throws caution to the wind entirely. 'My manager called me, said, 'Where's the single?'' she moans on Leave Me Alone, a Joan Jett-like litany of complaints about being told what to do, from having to sign NDAs to being ordered to behave in a way that won't damage her career.
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Leave Me Alone typifies the new female mood in pop, with its boldness and lack of concern about what people think, which is not easy in an age when technology means that anyone can tell you what they think. Perhaps it helps that Rapp has already made her name playing, as her most famous role suggests, mean girls. She certainly doesn't come across as someone likely to be fretting about checking her privilege. 'Oh Christ, it's getting hard to be nice,' she sighs on Mad, in theory a break-up song but in reality an exasperated critique of a girlfriend who is cross with her. And the mood of the album is best summarised by a summery pop anthem on which Rapp moans about life's annoyances, from agents harassing her to ex-girlfriends still wanting to be with her. It's called At Least I'm Hot.
She does show her sensitive side every now and then. On one haunted ballad she laments the 'other woman' destroying her romantic life, but the fact that it is called Why Is She Still Here? suggests she hasn't fully come to terms with her feelings. Amid all this, Rapp's sexuality is never politicised or used as a banner of queer identity, it is simply taken as fact. It means there is something carefree and fresh about the album, even as the songs stick to well-worn formats. Rapp really does come across as someone who is just being herself. And she just happens to be a mean girl. (Interscope)★★★★☆Follow @timesculture to read the latest reviews