INTERVIEW: Reneé Rapp on her debut album 'Snow Angel': “I'm saying everything that I feel, but I will never let anyone feel they've taken my power or my vulnerability away from me. It is always mine."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Breakout US singer-songwriter Reneé Rapp today releases her debut album Snow Angel, a gorgeous collection of intimate, raw, honest, emotional pop-rock songs that detail her life from the messy to the vulnerable.
Growing up in North Carolina, Rapp knew she wanted to make music since she was a young child. “I couldn't sit still in the car unless there was music,” she says. “Otherwise, I would cry the entire time.” As a teenager she would write and record her own music, and for a brief period was even part of a girl group, but her whole life and career changed in 2019 when she landed the lead role of Regina George in the Broadway musical adaptation of the iconic film Mean Girls. After the show shut down when the pandemic hit, Rapp was cast in the HBO series The Sex Lives of College Girls and moved to Los Angeles. Dealing with feelings of isolation, panic attacks and breakups ultimately led to Rapp relaunching her music career. “I got my heart ripped out of my chest and I was like, ‘Okay, it's fucking go time!’” she says.
Last year she released her debut single ‘Tattoos’, a heartbreaking ballad of being in a relationship but being terrified it will all end thanks to the trauma of previous experiences. More singles and an EP, Everything To Everyone, followed with each song she released attracting streams in the tens of millions.
Snow Angel kicks off with single ‘Talk Too Much’, which is arguably a sonic outlier on the album. A slinky beat breaks into a heavy rock guitar in the chorus as Rapp’s vocals switch from gentle and restrained to loud and frustrated as she sings about the self-sabotaging dialogue in her head which is telling her her current relationship will never last. “If I see a blue car today / We'll probably have to break up…I'm here again, talkin' myself out of my own happiness.”
Piano ballad ‘I Hate Boston’ is a beguiling, yet heartbreaking, track with clever, wry lyrics in which Rapp sings of how the end of a relationship had led her to hate Boston. “As far as I’m concerned they should just burn the whole city down / How’d you make me hate Boston? / It’s not its fault that you don’t love me.”
‘Poison Poison’ is a perky, almost dreamy track with lyrics that defy the sound as Rapp sings of feelings of hatred with blunt honesty. “You get on my nerves / You’re so fucking annoying / You could poison poison.” ‘So What Now’ starts as a pared back, acoustic guitar track before bringing in gentle beats as Rapp sings about the next steps in a relationship where neither side knows where they stand.
‘Pretty Girls’ brings a more electronic pop vibe to the album, with its swirling, slightly experimental, spacey sound, while ‘Tummy Hurts’ has a guitar-soul sonic as Rapp deals with anger towards the man who has left her for another woman.
The album ends on the reflective ‘23’. It is a melancholic look at growing another year older and wishing you felt more adept at handling life.. “Tomorrow I turn 23 / And it feels like everyone hates me / So old do you have to be to live so young and careless?” The song ends with a disjointed vocal hoping next year ‘I’ll understand me more.’ It is a moving and atmospheric way to the album and seems to sum up perfectly everything we have heard over the previous twelve tracks.
Reneé Rapp is an artist who has everything it takes to make serious waves in the music industry. There is a rare beauty in her music, and her intimate lyrics are smart, relatable and perfect for both personal mantras and screaming at the top of your lungs to release tension. Snow Angel is a stunning debut album and a perfect introduction to Rapp if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of listening to her. We recently caught up with her to chat more about the creation of the album and her career to date.
Hi, Renee. You are an absolute multi threat of talent, I'm sure you get that all the time but it's such a great thing to isn't it?
You know, it's nice. I'm trying, I'm trying. Thank you!
You gotta own it right?
I'm trying to. I feel like whenever I own it, I get very afraid of myself. So if I just operate in this state of ‘let's just see’, then that's my little like safety zone.
Do you think that's partly - I'm going straight into the big questions! - because historically women have been made to feel like they can own it? Or certainly not own more than, like, one thing?
Oh my god are you fucking kidding me, of course. The the second that I say like, ‘No, I'm doing that, to do this, and this is where I'm at’ people are like, ‘can you believe she would say that?’ And I'm like…’Okay. Understood. I'm gonna back off.’
It's so interesting and also so awful. I always get hella excited when someone's charging through and going, ‘yep, this is what I'm doing, and I'm good at it - suck it!’ Huge buckets of congratulations on Snow Angel, it is an absolute audio feast. It is so beautiful. I want to talk to you first about recent single ‘Talk Too Much’. There's so much angst to it, but it's still so fun. Can you talk me through a little bit about this track?
’Talk Too Much’ honestly, I wrote because I was in a new relationship. And I had a dream at the time that I killed my girlfriend, and I was like, fuck I don't know what this means. I was in a new relationship that was getting serious and I was nervous and anxious and trying to make sure that I was avoiding being hurt. After having the dream I woke up and I was like, ‘hey, just want to let you know, this is what happened last night while we were sleeping’. And they were like, “Okay…like, fine, I guess’. And that is where ‘Talk Too Much’ was born from. It's basically this unapologetic ‘Hi, this is something that's happened. I don't know if that means anything to you, but if it doesn't, we can keep moving.’
I love that. And you know, you gotta flag these things. So if this does end up in murder, well, I did tell you!
Right? I actually I have a defence, so…
I feel as well that it really sets the tone for the whole album, in this joyous cacophony of human existence. You write so beautifully, but it's delivered with such energy. And I don’t think many people apply that because when they're talking about things that are quite brutal, they have a tendency to make it sound very brutal, but you've got this vivaciousness to it, like a celebration. Where does that come from?
Thank you. You know, it comes from a lot of places but to be more specific, my mum always told me growing up ‘never let ‘em see you sweat’ and to say that to a kid that is so emotional and so incredibly anxious is such a mindfuck. And mean that in a good way, because I have this inherent thing of never let ‘em see you sweat, but also all I do is sweat and cry and get upset about these things, right? So I'm saying every single thing that I feel, but I will never let anyone feel like they've taken my power or my agency, or my emotions, or my vulnerability away from me. It is always mine, because I was told to never let them see you sweat. so I'm going to be incredibly honest but do it in a way that I keep my authority.
That's so good, because that's another thing that is told is that you can either be vulnerable or you can be angry - you can't be both because that's unattractive. And that's not allowed.
Correct. And if you're that, and you're a woman, you're crazy.
You're lyricism is just on point as well, I absolutely love it. In regards to songwriting, what was it that pulled you to it was? Was it the melody or was it the lyricism?
It's always been lyrics for me. Good lyrics bring a good melody, in my opinion. I grew up a theatre kid, so if you're feeling something, the melody is there. I have a song ‘Too Well’, that does well, and people really like it, therefore, I like it. But I don't love it, because when I was writing it I was having a really tough time feeling what I was saying, it just wasn't an awesome experience. So for me, the melody comes from the lyrics, because a good lyric will create a good melody.
Well, I gotta say, your opening to ‘Pretty Girls’ is one of the greatest and the melody of that track is incredible. It's such a turn on that subject matter. And again, it's really brutal, the brutal lows of careless experimentation
Yes, absolutely. With ‘Pretty Girls’ specifically, you take a situation and just kind of say, ‘it is what it is’. And that doesn't mean that it doesn't affect me, that doesn't mean that I don't feel sad about it, it doesn't mean that I don't feel good about it, it is just what is happening. That is just how it feels. And it feels different in a multitude of ways.
Do you think that energy that you've instilled in this album and in these experiences and these memories, was part of that thinking ‘when I play this live, I'm going to need to feel this again for the first time over and over again, so it's going to have to have a punch to it’?
Oh, my God, of course. I have so many songs that feel good in the moment and then after I'm so over it and so tired of it, and I'm like ‘nope, never again, doesn't matter’. The songs that for me stand the test of time, that feel so good live, are the songs where the feeling was so intense in the moment.
With that, being so inspired lyrically and making a great song, you were a musical theatre kid, but what were the artists or the songs that did that for you and still do it for you? The ones that made you go, ‘I want to do this.’
I never really listened to musical theatre music as a kid. I just did the shows, but I loved Big Fish, which is Andrew Lippa, who's an amazing composer and lyricist. I think I related to it a lot in a certain way because it's about a father and his son and their family, and my dad is like my best friend in the whole wide world. Theatre, obviously, has such a specific lyricism and it's really narrative driven and is so storytelling, much more than pop, frankly, to be honest. And I hope in a perfect world that I take influence from some of the composers that I love so much and put it into what I do now.
Being such a mega talent at such a young age, you're burning so bright, what what was your ‘Oh shit, this is it now. This is what I do, I'm singing and I'm touring and I'm about to release an album’. What was that moment that made you go, ‘this is where I step up’?
I feel like I have that moment every day! I did it earlier this morning, I started panicking about the album coming out. I did it yesterday when we were recording a bunch of different acoustic sets. It happens every day, and then the feeling goes away. Then I just go into a panic of trying to prove myself, and then it comes again, the next day. It's like a constant thing.
I love that. But that's just the creative in you and it just means that you're doing it because it's your passion
I know, you know it keeps me on my toes I guess so I'll take it.
You have an incredible tour coming up, and you have your album Snow Angel out today. What else is coming up for you Reneé?
I had this moment the other day where I was like, ‘damn, after this comes out, I just got to write another album.’ The album is only out today and I already a name for another album, I don't know if it'll be the next one, it might be the one after that. I’m like, damn, I gotta keep doing this. You don't just get to do one and you’re done. I actually want to do this more. which I know sounds crazy, but to me that was like, ‘oh, fuck, I gotta do it all over again and I have to keep proving myself’. That's a tough thing to do, but I'm excited and I'm up for the challenge.
Snow Angel is out now via Interscope Records/Universal Music. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Reneé Rapp, you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter.
