Rapped on the knuckles

Often at her best when on the attack, Reneé Rapp channels her defiant spirit into album ‘Bite Me’, writes Helen Brown

- Helen Brown

★★★★☆

“Leave me alone, bitch/ I wanna have fun!” runs the cheerleader chant of “Leave Me Alone”, the lead single from Reneé Rapp’s second album, Bite Me. Recalling the winkingly naughty, early-Noughties ’tude of Pink, she uses the lyrics of the record’s mission statement to flip off industry demands for new songs.

“Leave me alone, bitch/ I wanna have fun!” runs the cheerleader chant of “Leave Me Alone”, the lead single from Reneé Rapp’s second album, Bite Me. Recalling the winkingly naughty, early-Noughties ’tude of Pink, she uses the lyrics of the record’s mission statement to flip off industry demands for new songs. It’s perfectly on-brand. Gleefully unfiltered, 25-year-old Rapp has exploded into pop culture like a confetti cannon. Best known for eating up the role of high school queen bee Regina George in the musical adaptation of Mean Girls – on Broadway for a year in 2019 and then in the 2024 film – the North Carolina star impressed music critics with her emotionally frank pop debut Snow Angel (2023).