Snow Angel, the debut album by US musician and actor Reneé Rapp, doesn’t pull its punches. Three songs in, the 23-year-old is airing out an old friend with exaggerated, vitriolic vim: “You’re the worst bitch on earth,” she sings over Poison Poison’s breezy acoustic pop, “I hate you and your guts.”
Over the course of Snow Angel – which puts her firmly in the realm of emotionally candid young pop singers such as Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo – Rapp also criticises herself and ex-partners, writing raw, sophisticated songs in an attempt to make up for a childhood in which she was told she was “too emotional” by everyone around her. She has long been cursed with “really caring what people think, in a way that does not serve me”, she says. So, whenever she is worried about sending the wrong message with her music, she tries to remember: “I’m not making art to say this is my moral high ground and this is what I believe and agree with – I’m making art to be like, damn, this is what I’m feeling right now,” she says. “That doesn’t mean I’m proud of those feelings, but they are what they are – and that’s just art at the end of the day.”
