Continuing to roll out the singles from her upcoming sophomore album, Bite Me, Renée Rapp is offering a slightly different tone than the one she provided on “Leave Me Alone” and “Mad” (both being “super cunty” in nature). Although her third single, “Why Is She Still Here?,” technically has the same “brat energy” (as it’s now called thanks to Charli XCX), this time around, Rapp has a more “lounge singer-y” timbre. And uses it to essentially channel a jealous Carrie Bradshaw in “Three’s A Crowd” (something Olivia Rodrigo also knows all about if “Obsessed” is any indication) as she demands to know why there’s this third “presence” (read: woman) constantly hovering over her relationship.
Although it isn’t explicitly stated that this “hoverer” is an ex (as opposed to, say, just some random Jezebel), that’s the vibe one gets from a verse like, “You can tell me you don’t love her/But you should probably tell her too/‘Cause I can’t keep sleeping undercover/It’s like she’s always in the room.” In the “official visualizer” for the song, it’s at this moment that Rapp adopts something like an accusatory sneer as she stands in front of a Super 55-style microphone belting her tale of woe out in a style that is a unique mélange of Amy Winehouse and Jessica Simpson (though it’s more the latter—and not just because Rapp has blonde hair).
The Winehouse element is more about the sound of the music itself (courtesy of co-producers Alexander 23, Julian Bunetta and Omer Fedi), awash in the jazzy, bluesy tones of a mid-tempo Amy song (e.g., “You Sent Me Flying” or “Addicted”). Of course, it’s also very Winehouse-esque to sing lyrics that accuse a lover of doing her wrong (so wrong, in fact, that said lover might soon risk becoming an ex if they don’t start acting right).
This extends to Rapp further detailing how haunted she feels by her current girlfriend’s ex as follows: “She’s on that towel wrapped up around my head/And that note that’s stuck to the mirror/I shouldn’t have read.” Needless to say, Rapp is totally in the right for feeling both threatened and extremely irritated by this ex that just won’t disappear—whether that means her physical presence or the artifacts she’s left behind in the apartment of Rapp’s sig other. Or supposed sig other. For another complaint that Rapp has arrives in the lines, “No, I didn’t say shit when you introduced me as your friend/And yes, that’s what it is, but don’t you do that shit again/It’s funny ‘cause it didn’t feel like friends on the kitchen floor, no I don’t take friends to the back of my tour bus/I’d always give when you wanted more/But God forbid I draw any attention to questions you never answered/Well, except for, ‘Who’s fucking you better?’/You got me lowering standards.”
This shade thrown about lowering her standards also sounds a lot like Jessica Simpson’s fed-up vibe on her recent single, “Leave” (itself exuding an Alanis Morissette-meets-Britney Spears kind of aura). Even though, beyond the fact that both women are channeling similar “fuck being mistreated” energy of late, Rapp is very much giving Simpson’s “belt it out” vocals in general (it’s “I Think That I’m In Love With You” in particular that comes to mind).
And even though there’s a point where Rapp concedes that they’re not exactly “social media official” yet, this would-be girlfriend ought to recognize that she’s won a prize in Rapp (from Rapp’s point of view), and should therefore treat her like, say, a precious stone—constantly fearing she could be lost if one false move is made. But since this person clearly doesn’t see Rapp that way, Rapp laments, “No, it’s not fair/‘Cause if it’s you and I, then/Why is she still here?/Say you w-w-want me like, ‘Why’s she still here?’”
A question that only the ho it’s being addressed to can answer. But if one were to guess, the lone “logical” reason for keeping one’s ex in their back pocket is because it’s an easy way to stroke one’s ego. Not just because there’s apparently two people interested in the subject at the same time, but because the ex, in this person’s case, is a “quick call” away to act as a “sounding board.” And if that leads to a headboard being knocked against the wall, so be it.
As the song progresses, so, too, does the distinctiveness of Rapp’s torment as she keeps wondering not only, “Why’s she still here?,” but also why she herself keeps sticking around (cue Winehouse singing, “I should just be my own best friend/Not fuck myself in the head with stupid men”—though, here, it’s “women”). Thus, at another point, Rapp flips the pronouns by instead asking, “She’s still there, so tell me now/Why I’m still here?” In terms of the response to that query, well, any masochist in matters of romance knows that there’s a certain belief among those with anxious attachment issues that insists, to quote Morrissey, “The more you ignore me, the closer I get.”
This kind of thinking also applies to Rapp in the sense that she possesses the type of confidence level that allows her to believe that one would have to be crazy to not regard her as the “alpha and the omega” (“What else more do you need/When you got me right here?”). That choosing to be with any other woman is the embodiment of Blair Waldorf saying, “Once men have tasted caviar, it baffles me how they can settle for catfish” (side note: both kinds of fish are wrong/gross in different ways).
While Rapp continues to stand on a stage with a classic red curtain behind her (singing into the abovementioned “old-timey” mic), this breed of old school “softness” is offset by her leather jacket. Indeed, she isn’t exactly rocking the “fragile” Lana Del Rey dress look in the “Ride” video (wherein Del Rey, too, stands on a similar stage using the same kind of mic). Even though, obviously, she is quite emotionally fragile about what this tenuous relationship (or situationship) is doing to her. In this sense, what she shares in common perhaps most of all with Winehouse and Simpson (and, yes, Del Rey), based on their music, is that she doesn’t seem even remotely keen on fucking with polyamory.
