With Bite Me, Reneé Rapp Calls It a (W)rap on Giving a Fuck About People Pleasing

It’s not hard to see (or rather, hear) that things have changed drastically for Reneé Rapp since the release of her debut album, Snow Angel, in 2023. And if the divergence in album titles—going from Snow Angel to Bite Me—wasn’t enough of an indication, then the sound of her sophomore album’s opener, “Leave Me Alone,” will surely give listeners the picture. For while “Talk Too Much,” her intro track on Snow Angel, might have had the same “rock edge” to it, the lyrics are filled with a pointed lack of self-confidence—manifested in such lines as, “I’m here again/Talking myself out of my own happiness.” 

With “Leave Me Alone,” however, Rapp immediately establishes that she’s in her “confident (and no fucks given about people pleasing) era.” This much being apparent with the first verse, “I’m a real bad girl, but a real good kisser/Leave me alone bitch, I wanna have fun.” So it is that Rapp kicks off the motif of the appropriately titled Bite Me, a phrase that’s as awash in “00s codedness” as Rapp’s album cover, featuring her in a pose and “wind-blown” look that bears similarities to the likes of Jessica Simpson’s In This Skin and Hilary Duff’s Metamorphosis—both released in August of 2003, the year before the OG Mean Girls would come out. And yes, Mean Girls (2024) has certainly served Rapp’s purpose in finally getting her to where she always wanted to be: recognized as a singer.

Part of that recognition stems from Rapp at last fully embracing, for all intents and purposes, her bitchiness. Her long-standing “Regina George persona.” In other words, making no apologies for being a mean girl and instead using it as a superpower, a source of “charm” (at least to certain masochists). 

Surprisingly, embracing this side of herself didn’t come from playing Regina George, but rather, reaching her wit’s end by the time she played Coachella in April of 2024, telling Zane Lowe that, by that point, she was “dead behind the eyes,” “no one was home,” etc. In short, she had lost her fervor for what she was doing. Realizing that she was no longer enjoying doing the thing she loved was a wake-up call to the girl who founded her image on being nothing but fun/joyfully irreverent. But it’s hard to project braggadocio when your heart isn’t in it. Thankfully, her then new girlfriend, Towa Bird, reminded her of something very valuable: she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to. Including give in to the demands of the record execs telling her she “owed” them some new music. When Bird told her that, it was like a lightbulb went off in Rapp’s head. She at last understood that she had been trusting far too many other people with her career, instead of trusting her own instincts and intuition. 

What’s more, like Lorde, Rapp went off birth control during the, er, period when she finally started to record music for the album that would become Bite Me (indeed, lots of pop stars seem to be channeling different elements of Lorde these days). This combination of factors is what led Rapp to offer up her most honest and unvarnished music to date. Equal parts bravura and vulnerability, the dichotomies amount to what Rapp described as the fifty-fifty war within herself: the person who thinks she’s the shit and wants to be famous and the person who wants to “put a paper bag over her head” (her words to Lowe) and never be seen, therefore never judged. Of course, one would ever guess the latter based on “Leave Me Alone,” or the second song (and single) from Bite Me, “Mad.”

It’s at this juncture, so early on in the record, that Rapp asserts herself as an alt-rock diva inspired by elements of 90s and early 00s rock from female-led bands and solo artists (Elastica and Le Tigre come to mind—though Rapp did specifically mention Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill as a general influence on the album, joining Olivia Rodrigo’s club). Chastising her lover for wasting time and energy—more to the point, Rapp’s time and energy—on being mad when “all of the time you were fucking with my head, we could’ve been having sex, you could’ve been gettin’/All of my time, but you were being mad/Could’ve been gettin’ head.” 

Rapp’s disappointment in her lover (whether it’s the same one referred to in “Mad” or not) continues on the third track and single, “Why Is She Still Here?” Showcasing a sound and tone that has a different kind of moody vibe (more jazz moody than regular moody) than the previous two songs, the Jessica Simpson-meets-Amy Winehouse number questions a new would-be girlfriend about why their ex is always hovering, whether literally or metaphorically (this, too, being the “three’s a crowd” topic of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Obsessed”). Tired of dealing with the dubious dynamic between them, Rapp finally has to build on the query in the song title with, “She’s still there, so tell me now why I’m still/Here?” 

The flickers of insecurity on “Why Is She Still Here?” are in full force on the following song, “Sometimes” (that’s right, someone dared to come for Britney’s song title—and, to be sure, there is an element of, “Sometimes I run/Sometimes I hide/Sometimes I’m scared of you/But all I really want is to hold you tight/Treat you right/Be with you day and night/Baby, all I need is time” to it). Thus far the slowest jam on Bite Me, Rapp admits (in a rare moment of removing her veneer of arrogance) to a new love interest, “I thought I could do it/Thought I could be fun/Now I’m breaking all my rules/At night, you say things you don’t mean in the morning/But I won’t play the part anymore.” And with this revelation comes the belted out, hyper-emotional chorus, “If I can’t have you, then let me find someone else/I’m tired of being a good time/It’s killing me having you sometimes/If you still want her, then leave me here by myself [this line going back to the theme in ‘Why Is She Still Here?’]/I know what I said, but it’s not fine.” 

And perhaps whoever she was talking to (again, probably Towa Bird) in “Sometimes” seems to have received the message once the hyper-sexual “Kiss It Kiss It” rolls around. And no, Rapp is not referring to her ass, but rather being eaten out—and oh so well. Hence, the chorus, “You’re gonna kill me if you kiss it like that/Got me in tears, and not because I’m sad/Top of the mornin’, let me pull your hair back/Like, come on and kiss it, kiss it/You’re gonna kill me if you kiss it like that/No, I don’t mind a little disrespect/Talkin’ is borin’, let me throw your hair back/Likе, come on and kiss it, kiss it.” She even throws in a very Beyoncé-esque “goddamn, goddamn, goddamn” (which Bey repeats in the same way during “Flawless”) to express her intense sense of pleasure. To be sure, this is a song about wanting to be “dicked down” right, but also “treated nice” (as is “Shy,” which appears later on the album). Qualities that don’t often exist in the same person. 

However, two qualities that can exist in the same person is being both good and bad. Though, of course, women are only “allowed” to be purely “good.” Once they do something to negate that reputation, though, they’re considered, by society, to be “tainted.” This is a key theme explored in the 80s-sounding “Good Girl” (to that point, this is a track that could easily be sung by Rick Springfield if it was reworked to the third person). A song that suggests Rapp was a “good girl” before a “bad girl” came into her life to negatively influence her (though, more accurately, set her free). In a certain sense, this is Rapp’s version of Charli XCX’s fittingly titled “Mean Girls,” during which XCX describes exactly the kind of girl that might “destroy” Rapp’s “good girl” life: “Yeah, it’s two a.m., and she’s out there/In the sheer white dress, wearin’ last night’s makeup/All coquettish in the pictures with the flash on/Worships Lana Del Rey in her AirPods, yeah/Yeah, she’s in her mid-twenties, real intelligent/Hedonistic with the gravel drawl and dead eyes.”

Indeed, it’s somewhat kismet that Rapp characterized herself as having dead eyes during most of 2024, but ultimately just coming across as the “mean girl” that Regina George had cemented her as. A persona she only recently unlocked to its full potential, as evidenced in the final verse, “Good girl/She’s blackout drunk, I’m worried ‘bout her/Good girl/She’s gonna disappoint her father/Good girl/But being bad is her superpower/Good girl, good, g-good girl.” 

It’s the bad girl within that shines through on the emotionally fraught “I Can’t Have You Around Me Anymore.” A sparse acoustic track with a slow tempo that explores Rapp’s complex feelings for another woman who isn’t her own girlfriend. That woman, more than likely, is Towa Bird, as both she and Rapp were in relationships when they first met. Making Rapp herself the kind of “always there” threat she so clearly can’t stand in “Why Is She Still Here?” and “Sometimes.” Quickly understanding that her feelings for this person aren’t quite “kosher,” Rapp candidly sings, “Tell me where you’ll be, and I’ll leave my own party/It’s probably a problem if it’s this hard to stop/Now it’s causing lots of issues with my baby at home/‘Cause in every single picture, we’re a little too close/And I love you but I wanna, and it’s making me feel unsure/So I can’t have you around me anymore.” Obviously, though, that plan didn’t pan out. And Rapp is no longer “Shy” about copping to what she wants in the following track of the same name (which she also performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in promotion of the album’s release). 

Originally titled “Handle With Care,” Rapp calls this out as the song that went through the most “iterations” on the record, ending up as another alt-rock-à-la-90s-sounding track (in the same spirit as “Mad”). Produced by Omer Fedi and Alexander 23, the grunge-y (but pop-ified) guitar riffs are complemented by Rapp’s scream-singing chorus, “Don’t handle me with care/When you’re pullin’ my hair/Baby, ruin my life/I want it bad, I swear/That I’m really not scared/I’m just a little bit shy.” These conflicting feelings smacking of PinkPantheress on “Tonight” when she sings, “And how many hours can we stay up?/You can ruin my makeup/Yes, it’s fine/You could even ruin my life.” Of course, what a faux “it’s fine” girl like Rapp and PinkPantheress really mean when they say such things is, “Please please please, don’t prove I’m right.”

But if ever Rapp gets too vulnerable on Bite Me, she immediately switches back to her Regina George aura, as is evident on “At Least I’m Hot.” Co-produced by Omer Fedi and Vaughn Oliver, the backing music has a similar sound and tempo to Estelle’s “American Boy,” with additional disco elements that accent Rapp’s cocky attitude when she shrugs, “But if I can’t be happy, then at least I’m hot/Rather be in my bag, then get stuck in my thoughts/Yeah, even if the whole world hates me, no love lost/If I’m gonna cry, then at least I’m hot.” With Rapp ostensibly never acknowledging, much like Mariah Carey, that the passage of time can take its toll on one’s hotness. 

For now, however, Rapp can pretend there is no tomorrow, instead living for today—as is apparent on the next track, “I Think I Like It Better When You’re Gone,” which finds her coming to terms with the idea that life’s too short to be with someone she doesn’t really like all that much. In this regard, the song has Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” all over it in terms of lyrical content, namely when Eilish delights in the revelation, “When I’m away from you/I’m happier than ever/Wish I could explain it better/I wish it wasn’t true.” But alas, it is, with Rapp explaining it better as follows: “I know that I’m supposed to miss you and wish that you were here/But the more I drink, the more I think, you might just disappear/I got a funny feeling, funny feeling somеthing’s wrong/I think I like you better/I think I likе you better when you’re gone.” Add it to the long list of “fuck this/you/it” sentiments on Bite Me.

And, speaking of “funny,” the penultimate track is called “That’s So Funny,” and also happens to be saturated with a Billie Eilish tone. This further compounded by the simple piano backing that channels “What Was I Made For?” Yet it’s the lyrics of Ariana Grande on “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)”—namely, “I don’t like how you paint me/Yet I’m still here hanging”—that echo/serve as a foil to Rapp’s chorus, “Yeah, that’s so funny, baby, that you would tell it like that/You paint yourself rather lovely, baby, don’t you?/Yeah, that’s so funny, baby, that you could play it all back/And skip every part where I loved you.” Well, Rapp is no longer tolerating any such fuckery. 

Thus, for her album’s grand finale, she returns to the defiant alt-rock sound that punctuates most of Bite Me. A sound that mirrors the mood and mindset of a girl who has made it clear she is no longer bending over backwards for anyone (unless it results in sexual pleasure). With “You’d Like That Wouldn’t You,” Rapp saves some of her cheekiest lyrics for last as she pokes fun at an ex who would splooge if they could believe that Rapp would never “love somebody new” and continue to forever carry a torch for the ex instead. So it is that Rapp, dripping with Olivia Rodrigo-esque sarcasm (think: “good 4 u”), goads, “I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?/I bet you’d probably touch yourself at night/Thinkin’ I’m thinkin’ of you/Yeah, you’d like that, you’d like that/I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

During the bridge, Rapp further presses this ex’s buttons with the lines, “Honey, it’s pathetic/And I need you to know/The thought of gettin’ back together makes me wanna die alone,” adding “I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?/If I cut my heart out of my chest/And bled out in my living room/Yeah, you’re sick and you’d like that.” But with Bite Me, Rapp, in contrast to this ex, is pronouncing herself well. Or at least well enough to know that self-care, from this point forward, is going to take precedence above all else—especially people pleasing.