The American pop-rock star Reneé Rapp recently earned a UK No 1 with her spunky, defiant second album, Bite Me. It was an achievement that pleased her, even if it didn’t quite thrill her. Her old team used to be “very American, very grandiose” in that way, she says, doing a lightly hysterical, nasal impression of them from a chair in Universal’s London HQ: “‘You’ve worked so hard and this is everything and oh my God and oh my God and if your younger self could see…’” The 25-year-old slaps her thighs as she replies back to them: “We gotta pack it up. I’m not curing cancer.” It’s better to be neutral about achievements anyway, she’s realised. “Those [successes] will never feel as high as making a record and I used to think that they would and they do not, and that’s OK.” To conclude: “I was… pleased with it being No 1.”
It’s a measured approach to winning from such a resolute character, a vivacious musician whose music is equal parts big belting vocals, jazz hands energy and messy gay relationship themes. One whose star began to rise years before her 2023 debut album with a role as Regina George, ultimate sovereign of the school cafeteria, in Mean Girls on Broadway, a part that earned Rapp a Queen Bee reputation that often precedes her. Between 2021 and 2024, Rapp also starred in HBO Max’s queer teen drama The Sex Lives of College Girls, a show I admit I haven’t seen, and I suspect she won’t mind, given the rumours that for her it was more miserable to make than it ever could be to watch. “Girl, neither have I,” she says flatly. “There’s no need for you to watch it. Let me f***ing tell you right now. You are fine. You are not missing anything.”
