“Would you like me to source you a paper towel?”
Barely two minutes into an interview with Reneé Rapp – the pop star, film actress, Broadway performer, and media figure – and I had already spilled an entire bottle of water across the table.
Fortunately, as a parent of two, I habitually carry a supply of tissues (along with plasters, sun cream, and antiseptic). The spill was quickly contained.
“You literally have tissues with you? I’m so impressed,” Rapp exclaimed, before admitting her own parents operate in a similar fashion.
“My dad brings hair bands everywhere because I’m always without a hair tie,” the 25-year-old revealed. “So I know I’m going to be an insufferable parent.”
“I’ll be saying, ‘Please let me brush your teeth,’ and the kid’s going to be, like, 17.”
We met in London’s King’s Cross, near Rapp’s record label offices. She appeared slightly weary after two days of live performances and somewhat sleep-deprived, thanks to a group of children who had been racing in the corridor outside her hotel room.
Nonetheless, she remained affable and engaging, offering numerous sharp quotes that reinforced her reputation as one of pop’s most candid figures.
This label gained prominence during the promotion of last year’s “Mean Girls” film. Rapp portrayed the central antagonist, Regina George, reprising the role she originated on Broadway, and consistently veered off-script throughout the press tour.
She criticized the owner of a bus company whose boss had mistreated her mother, declaring, “I can’t stand you, and I hope your business burns,” and praised co-star Megan Thee Stallion for possessing “the best ass I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Additionally, she confessed to being “very publicly ageist” and stated that her only male crush was Justin Bieber because he “looks like a lesbian.”
YouTube is replete with compilations bearing titles such as: “Reneé Rapp making her PR team question their life choices for 5 minutes straight“.
The singer is familiar with media training protocols but simply does not align with them.
“I participated in a phone call years ago where they instructed us on how to answer certain questions and what to avoid saying,” she recounted, “and I just remember thinking, ‘This feels so boring to me.'”
“I believe it’s a skill to provide a well-considered, innocuous answer. It’s just not something I’m interested in pursuing.”
“For me, good interviews resemble a conversation that demonstrates how you interact with the other person… or how you don’t. And that’s entertaining. That’s something I want to observe.”
When she initially realized her interviews were garnering attention, she was taken by surprise.
“Everyone on my team was saying, ‘Oh, there’s a trend where you just say whatever [comes into your head].'”
“It was perplexing because, to me, I didn’t quite understand what I was doing, other than speaking precisely as I always have since childhood.”
“And I actually became somewhat insecure about it last year – because I never anticipated that my personality and the cadence of my speech would be analyzed.”
Eventually, Rapp mustered the courage to watch some of those YouTube compilations, “and I thought, OK, this is kind of funny.”
“I simply recognized that I couldn’t halt it or diminish it. So, I embraced it.”
She even playfully addresses the situation in her recent single, Leave Me Alone.
“Signed a hundred NDAs, but I still say something,” she declares with punky energy over a punchy, “Oh Mickey”-esque drumbeat.
“Leave Me Alone” is a witty response to those who have attempted to smooth out Rapp’s edges. However, it originated from genuine frustration.
Last March, she had just concluded a European tour, coinciding with the “Mean Girls” single “Not My Fault” achieving the biggest success of her career thus far. Suddenly, she felt pressure to follow it up.
“I was informed that, essentially, everyone wanted me to release a single in the summer and an album in the fall,” she stated.
“I started panicking. I was like, ‘Holy crap, how am I going to do that?’, because I was really, really, really depressed last year. I was so overworked, and I was so run down. I didn’t have any time to get myself together.”
“I was crying to my girlfriend about it, like, ‘I have no idea how I’m going to do this.’ And she was literally like, ‘You don’t have to, and, by the way, you shouldn’t.'”
Rapp concurred with the advice but proceeded to work nonetheless, a consequence of career insecurity and a desire for validation.
“I thought, ‘This is what someone’s asking of me, so I can’t not fulfill that, because that means I’m not working hard enough, and that means I don’t want it enough.'”
That single-minded, almost masochistic, focus stems from her parents.
Her father is a medical salesman, while her mother, an accountant, now serves as her business manager.
“People often say, ‘Wow, that must be challenging, the mother-daughter dynamic,'” she remarked.
“Of course, there are difficult moments, but I encounter difficult moments working with people I’m not related to as well – and no one will ever protect me like my mother.
“Other people will throw me under the bus faster than you can blink an [expletive] eye.”
“Both my parents,” she concluded, “care so deeply about each other and our family that there’s a sort of aggression and determination that has translated to me, especially regarding work.”
Like many perfectionists before her, however, Rapp discovered that she couldn’t simply power through the exhaustion and frustration.
Upon arriving at the studio to work on new music, everything poured out.
“I was basically ranting, saying I wished people would get off my back.”
“And everyone in the room said, ‘That’s the song.'”
Written spontaneously, “Leave Me Alone” quickly became the obvious choice to launch Rapp’s second album, “Bite Me.”
Before the interview, she played me six of the record’s 12 songs, including an irresistibly catchy tribute to her girlfriend, Towa Bird.
Titled “Shy,” it describes how Rapp became tongue-tied around the British musician when they toured together in 2023.
“I am not a shy person whatsoever, so that made me realize how madly in love I was with her,” she said.
“I had just ended a relationship and was so relieved to be on my own, then I was smacked in the face by these feelings.”
“I was a nervous wreck, like, ‘I want to throw up.'”
She remains smitten today. Her opal blue eyes gleam as she gushes about her “British princess.”
“Not only is she my best friend and my most trusted confidante, but she also wants me to win just as much as I want her to win – and that feeling is so rare.”
Elsewhere, the album reflects on Rapp’s former relationships, including a pair of tracks that explore what happens when a third person inserts themselves into a relationship.
On “Why Is She Still Here,” Rapp confronts her partner about a girl who has gotten a little too close: “You tell me you don’t love her/ but you should probably tell her, too.“
Flipping the script, Rapp severs ties with a friend when the temptation to stray becomes too strong on the melancholy ballad “I Can’t Have You Around Me.”
She sings it quietly, like an apology, with a subtlety that wasn’t always present on her debut album, “Snow Angel.”
“Being a theatre girl transitioning to pop music can be really difficult,” confessed the star, who literally has the phrase “Plus De Voix” (more vocals) tattooed on her left wrist.
“You go from singing your guts out to trying to tailor that voice and that volume to a studio setting.”
“It was really hard for me, working out how to give the same quality of performance but also pulling back 5,000 percent.”
“But I realized that if I want to have a really successful pop career, I have to make music that doesn’t use the same parts of my voice that I use live.”
She is looking forward to performing these songs live, but Rapp admits the burnout from her last tour still casts a shadow.
“I couldn’t name you one set I’ve played in the last two years where I felt comfortable,” she said.
“I look out [at the audience], and I’m like, ‘I gotta go home.'”
Part of the problem is that, as her star rose, Rapp’s concerts attracted more casual fans and critics.
“I guess it’s just harder for me to believe now that people care, even though I can see that the ones at the front do,” she said.
“And a lot of voices came into my head. Criticism, self-destruction, labelling yourself not good enough. All of those negative things made it harder for me to perform.”
But with new material (and a much-needed break) under her belt, Rapp is hopeful that her upcoming tour, which hits the UK next March, will be different.
“Early on in my career, I was so euphoric when I played,” she said.
“It’ll be good to remember that feeling.”
Golden from the film’s soundtrack has landed a Number 1 slot on this week’s Official Singles Chart.
James B Partridge started his school bangers sing-alongs during Covid-19 lockdown.
The festival lasts until Sunday, with headliners including Sir Tom Jones and the Sugababes.
Thousands of people are expected to travel to the Devon town during the eight-day event.
The second day of the Highland music festival will see headline performances by Supergrass and CMAT.