Reneé Rapp emerges with the biggest female solo debut album this year with "Snow Angel"
Image Courtesy of Universal Music Group/Katia Temkin
Reneé Rapp released her debut studio album “Snow Angel” on Friday, August 17, following her debut EP “Everything to Everyone,” last November. The album is the biggest female solo debut album for a female artist this year.
Rapp rose to fame through acting, including roles like Regina George in the Broadway musical “Mean Girls” from 2019 to 2020. The acting-to-singing career pipeline is not uncommon, but Rapp got her start in theater, winning the 2018 Jimmy Award, a musical theater award given to two high school students annually. Still, it may come as a surprise to fans that she has always envisioned music as her ideal career.
“Music was always the thing I wanted to do and the only thing I thought I would do,” Rapp said. “It wasn't that I didn't want to act; I idolized Jennifer Aniston in “Friends,” but I didn't think I was a good actor at all.”
Alyah Chanelle Scott is another woman in the industry who has had a tremendous impact on Rapp’s career. Scott has done background vocals for Rapp and directed the music videos for “Snow Angel”' and “Talk Too Much,” both songs on Rapp’s latest album.
Rapp’s musical theater background shines through her powerful voice and songwriting abilities. In the titular song “Snow Angel,” Rapp compares overcoming a breakup to surviving a winter. “I’ll make it through the winter if it kills me,” she sings.
The music video for “Talk Too Much,” features Rapp and social media personality Kennedy Walsh in a heated poker game in which her constant chatter gets her and Walsh in trouble. “I’m here again, talking myself out of my own happiness,” Rapp sings, relatable to any overthinker. However, the video could have gone in a completely different direction: Rapp and Scott were considering shooting the music video on a basketball court instead and Scott had been scouting out Staples Center in Los Angeles.
Other songs on the album include “Poison Poison” which Rapp corresponds with her Capricorn sun and labels “I Wish,” a song about her parents and discovering mortality at ten years old, her Pisces moon.
“Poison Poison” was written about three different times because Rapp had written identifying lyrics that could have posed a danger to her subject. Rapp recalls “The Wedding Song,” another song on the album, as being “a hard [song to] sing,” spending hours in the studio recording it.
Other songs touch on similarly heavy topics. In “Pretty Girls,” Rapp describes her experience as an openly bisexual woman, fielding advances from self-proclaimed straight women who sexualize her. “(You) tell me if you were gonna, that I would be the one you tried,” she sings.
Although “Pretty Girls,” touches on an unfortunately common situation that members of the LGBTQ+ community face, Rapp balances the sad theme with a catchy chorus and an upbeat tempo.
“I am very fortunate to have an enormous community of queer people around me who all identify in different ways and who all lift each other up,” Rapp, who has been publicly out for almost ten years, said. “When [fans] talk about being gay, it makes me feel cooler to be gay.”
“Snow Angel” shows Rapp’s tremendous range, touching on various topics like the sexualization of bisexual women in “Pretty Girls” and breakups like “Snow Angel” and “Poison Poison.” Rapp will be on tour this year with her producer Alexander23 and Towa Bird.
“Snow Angel” by Reneé Rapp is available on all music platforms. If you want to stay up to date with Rapp, check out her socials: Instagram, TikTok , and Twitter.