For Reneé Rapp the love of making music burns brighter than ever…

Reneé Rapp interviewed by Paul Flynn for Perfect Issue 10.

At one minute to the exact hour of arrangement, Reneé Rapp appears on the end of her Zoom line, looking hot, goofy, blonde and off-duty. She fiddles with the ‘unmute’ button, straightens her hair with the flat of a hand and settles in for business. Last week she finished her tour. Or kind of finished it, as she explains (there are some ‘festival-ish’ things still in the diary; she pulls a half-comic gutted face at the ‘ish’). She’s tired, a little antsy. But don’t let that put you off. Of all the mesmerising technicolour dreamgirls currently claiming space, bringing the fuck-you to the international pop graph, Reneé may yet turn out to be the greatest. She’s built her loyalty card the right way. She’s one hundred per cent the most fun. I ask where we’re talking to her, for example. ‘I’m home,’ she says, twiddling a piece of her hair. ‘I’m in LA.’ A beat. ‘Thank fucking Christ.’

Reneé Rapp is at a super exciting plot-point of her stardom curve. Two albums deep, she is beloved by a devoted army of fiercely protective pop fans at an essential stage of their own development, who cling to her every word. She takes the responsibility seriously enough to repay them with serious attitude. Whenever she appears on the none-more-now relationships podcast Call Her Daddy, for which the louche gait of her pop persona feels almost bespoke, listener numbers inevitably skyrocket. She’s old friends with Cara Delevingne. Amy Poehler totally fangirled over Reneé when she showed up for her Good Hang podcast last summer. In spring last year, she casually came out as lesbian, lending her second suite of songs a cute narrative twist about personal discovery. If the current crop of amazing pop girls give mostly head girl/prefect energy, Reneé is very much the sort you’d bump into in detention. She’s absolutely the one you’d cast in Euphoria.

Reneé began life as a schoolgirl musical theatre upstart. She was plucked from her North Carolina upbringing, just out of high school, to come to New York and live in a Hell’s Kitchen shoebox, in order to play Regina George in Mean Girls: The Musical on Broadway. That was under the instruction of Tina Fey. It was a role she felt tailor-made for. After Covid closed the show down, she was picked by another screen boss bitch, Mindy Kaling, to star in her network comedy, The Sex Lives of College Girls. Yet it’s as a singer, a pop star that Reneé properly dazzles, making big, bold, beautifully easy-access pop music with unusual and often inspired references. Imagine peak Aguilera toning down the trill with a Rough Trade record collection and you’re halfway in. 

‘Leave Me Alone’, the addictive comeback single for her second album, Bite Me, sounds like it was crafted on the same solar plane as the first Elastica record or by a poppy hand who understood what makes The Breeders’ ‘Cannonball’ so effervescent, then throws them both into a smash-up with vintage Blondie and peak Britney. It opens with the meandering boast ‘I’m a real bad girl but a real good kisser,’ the sort of thing you’d like to lope up to someone in a trashy bar on a Texan freeway slip road and deliver, slurred, at 2am. By any pop metric, it was one of 2025’s classics. 

Reneé is a big enough deal to fill stadiums, but still yet to make the crossover to household name. That should, comfortably, be the goal for 2026. She is notoriously, famously outspoken. She makes a big deal of not being media trained and this riotous public persona has given her a spritely leap ahead of everyone playing by the usual rules. Yet underneath her blizzard of bravado, she is an excellent scholar and philosopher of the reasons pop music exists and the reasons she wants to make it. 

So I was kind of glad we got her a little tired. This is Reneé as she doesn’t usually present. Contemplative, often lost in thought, asking herself some tricky questions, like why do I do this? I loved that, when asked why she chose pop stardom over musical theatre, she said the following: ‘Well, to be a musician was all I ever wanted. Being a musician would fulfil me. The other stuff just happened to be something I was good at.’ What I loved most about that tripping off the fabulous tongue of a super-talented new pop tour de force was that I believed her. It feels almost like a public duty now to make Reneé Rapp one of the biggest stars on the planet. Bon chance, dear. 

How are you doing this morning? 

I’m good but my body is still on, like, tour-time, tour schedules. My sleep schedule’s so fucked I was trying wake up over an hour ago and I guess I just… didn’t? 

I’ll try and be gentle. 

No, you’re fine. It’s one of those things where I get so used to not being able to sleep until super late and not being able to wake until early and it never feels good. It always feels like I’m 16 and life’s just shit. 

How do you feel the tour went?

Um… I mean, so much changed in my life from the beginning to end of tour. 

Do you want to outline those things for us? 

I totally don’t. There is something about touring that makes your life so fantastically unmanageable. It just reveals so many cracks that are already there in your life that are completely unsustainable in the first place. Given the fact that you’re on the road and dealing with so many other things, I guess it just makes them much more visible, much louder. So I always feel like I go through an incredible life-shift whenever I’m on tour. For some reason, tour becomes so revealing, even if it’s something that I knew already. Tour just makes me go, OK, you’ve got to get the fuck out of my face.

Is this tied to the responsibility you have for the happiness of a roomful of strangers night after night?

Absolutely. Right? 

That feels like a fairly insane thing to go through.

Correct. And there are two things to that. It’s a huge undertaking and it’s a massive blessing. I guess the truth is that tour always changes up my personal life in a huge way and [changes] the inner workings of my business because that’s when my responsibility is at one hundred per cent. I don’t feel that same responsibility when I’m making music because that process feels so much more for me. That’s a dance in my own head all day. 

Audiences think we understand that thing you go through, because we understand dopamine much better in an age of clicks and a culture of personal approval metrics. But it’s nothing like it. Nobody has invested in clicking on our picture. 

No, it’s a different beast. I’m really glad that people who are not artists don’t know what it feels like. It’s better if you don’t know what it’s like for someone who’s doing it. Sometimes now, when I go to concerts, I’m thinking about the inner workings of the show, or if it’s a friend of mine and I know their mental state, I know this is going to be really hard today. So, I almost envy…

The audience their naivety?

Yes! Because that’s what it should be. That’s the whole point of going to shows. You go to see magic. 

Can you ever watch a pop show where your suspension of disbelief just disappears?

Never one hundred per cent. To your point, it’s the same when I see movies now. I was watching something last night and I was like, oh, the extras are tweaking. 

What was it?

I was watching Pluri… fuck, how do you pronounce it? Pluribus? Fuck, so good. Insane. So, no. Suspension of disbelief is never there. But I do appreciate different parts of the show now that I never knew were there before. Like, fuck, that production change was insane. That three-song run? So good. 

Congratulations on ‘Bite Me’. It’s a great record. It feels cool without telling you it’s cool. 

I appreciate that because that is, in my opinion, the best approach to doing anything: do it without spelling it out. It’s like if you wore archival Tom Ford for Gucci and then went round the entire night saying you’re wearing archival Tom Ford for Gucci. No. Wear it and shut the fuck up. Then people will say, ‘Ooh, she’s in archival Tom Ford for Gucci, you know?’ It’s different if you say it. You ruin the whole fucking thing. 

Is ‘Bite Me’ the record you should’ve made at this point? Do you feel like it sounds like it should?

When I was making it, when I finished recording? Absolutely. Like, five thousand per cent. I remember just feeling so elated with the quality of music that I’d made and that we’d put together. Like, fuck, it was exactly what I wanted to make. I was so happy. I also, historically, will say that I love writing music and detest putting music out. Because once you put it out, it’s really hard to hold on to how you feel about it, even if it’s good. I remember when ‘Leave Me Alone’ came out and everyone really liked it. For some reason, I liked it less. It’s confusing. I was like, this is such a sleazy little pop record, of quality. And now I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t sit in things well. I don’t have that as a person. I have come to find that out about myself, that I fucking love making music but I mentally don’t do well releasing it. 

Is there a little psychological thing to be put together here about your personal life? If you’ve been through the process of coming out, you know what it’s like to have other people’s opinions affect the way you think about yourself. 

Yes. Hmm. I would be remiss to say that it doesn’t make me think about it. Or I don’t worry about it. I have always been a performer. There’s something interesting when you’re told you’re an extrovert your whole life. You fall into it. Because I’ve been told it so much, I neglect how much I loved being alone and how much I loved making something that is solely artistic in a room of maximum four people. I make it with people who I love. Who I feel trust, understand and challenge me. I guess my point is that my album will always be something to me that it is not to other people. And it will always be something to other people that it is not to me. And I have to be fine with that. I also just, from a personality standpoint, I have a really addictive personality. 

What do you worry most about in regard to that? 

I actually… don’t…. worry about it? (Pause) That’s actually not true. In terms of making music, I don’t worry about it. Because it constantly takes me out of that thing I am doing and puts me into a daydreaming place. It puts me into a creative place pretty much all the time, because the part that I find myself addicted to is the adrenalin high and the excitement and the creative orgasm of making the song fucking fantastic. That’s what I want to do and that’s what I get addicted to. So I don’t worry about it in terms of songwriting. But it’s hard on my mood, having an addictive personality. Because I deeply, deeply, deeply struggle with allowing myself to be in the moment. I’m constantly time-travelling and always thinking about what I fucked up in the past and what I want to do better in the future. I’m always chasing something. You know? That is just my personality. And I’ve always been that way. 

Take me back to North Carolina, to school, growing up. Who was the first pop star that entranced you completely? 

My big North Star my whole life and career was always Beyoncé. Then Justin Bieber. My obsessive fangirl went to the Never Say Never movie the day it came out. I was so into it and enamoured with him. Those were my two pop stars. 

That’s a pretty fabulous era of pop stardom that you are awakening through. 

It was the best. The best. There was such an intrigue when it came to musicians. I didn’t know who Beyoncé was. She was a statue, a superhero. And she has maintained that level of mystery, however many years into her career. 

In this age of intense engagement, of giving everything away, can pop mystery still exist?

Yes it one thousand per cent can exist, because Harry Styles is doing it. 

Oh, you’re good. 

The way I think about Harry Styles and his music and his artistry is in terms of intrigue. He is a little fairy-like mystery. You look at his career and, OK, his music is spectacular. He makes proper albums. He disappears. He creates this air of obsession. And he’s mysterious and sexy and unbelievably talented. It’s a similar thing of never being able to know how people perceive me. 

Is that true? You have a very Reneé Rapp persona that you can switch into easily. 

Not to be the worst, but it is really instinctual. I was doing it really early on in my career and then people started talking about it and then people started asking for it and then I started overthinking what I was doing and, wait, then I’m scared and now I don’t feel comfortable or how to act like myself. But I instinctually know how to give a version of myself. Which is also confusing. You do one thing and it publicly alters the perception of you and then everything is kind of tailored around that one thing. 

The public has no appetite for nuance, which is why if you can do or be Harry and silent and enigmatic then you’re fine. 

You’re saved. 

What’s the one thing you did that this correlates to?

I was going to say that everyone thinks I’m aggressive. But they thought right. I am. 

Your aggressive is my gregarious.

What does that mean? 

That you’re naturally outgoing, that eyes will find you, that you light up a room. You’re on, you’re one hundred per cent. 

Thank you. I’m going to write ‘gregarious’ down. It’s a good word. I’ll have that. 

If it’s your next single, I want one per cent. 

I’ll tip you a point, don’t worry. 

Let’s go back to school. Beyoncé and Justin have turned your head. What is it then that takes you into the world of musical theatre? Do you watch an episode of Glee and think ‘I want to do that’? Or is it that you want to be where the gay kids hang out?

It’s so funny because when I was in with the theatre kids I was like, I am nothing like y’all. When, of course, I was exactly like them. I mean, please. I was such a rude little hypocrite. I was like, ‘Y’all are gay? That’s weird.’ I didn’t really know. OK, of course I did know gay people, the gay theatre kids stereotype. But my friend group was, and I still have them to this day, the coolest friends ever. I have the most beautiful group of friends. So sick, amazing music taste, amazing sense of style. I was friends with very cool, indie, sexy people. But they all ended up being gay. Like, everyone. All of us. The only gay people I knew as a kid were the really, really hot girls on the basketball team. They were everything because even the straight girls loved them because they were so sexy. We listened to sick indie and R&B music. Like, fucking Frank Ocean was our North Star. 

Amazing. 

We thought we were better than everyone else, because we were. We were gay and cute. 

People forget what Channel Orange did. Like one minute gay culture is the naffest thing on earth, then Channel Orange comes out and it’s the coolest and most interesting. 

My favourite song on Channel Orange is ‘Bad Religion’.  

And on Blonde?

I mean, it’s one of my favourite songs ever and one of the best songs ever written. It’s ‘Self Control’. 

I’m getting quite a clear picture of who your friends are now. 

So attractive. I was so lucky. 

What did you know about Mean Girls before you went into it?

I’d seen the movie religiously since I was a kid. I was obsessed with it. I had just seen it so many times. My friends always said, this would be you. And I was like, I totally agree. A hot, bitchy blonde did not seem like an insult to me. I was in, immediately. 

While the whole musical theatre thing is happening for you, there’s a pop star thing ringing in the back of your head. What can pop stardom give you that being on the stage in a musical theatre production can’t? 

Well, to be a musician was all I ever wanted to do. Being a musician would fulfil me. The other stuff happened to be something I was good at. 

That’s brilliant. 

Making music is the only thing that makes me solely happy, I just happen to be quite good at the other things. And I love doing them. When I was acting in that TV show [The Sex Lives of College Girls], I thought, ‘I don’t really understand why I’m here. I don’t think I’m very good at this.’ But I knew that I was a great singer and I knew that I loved singing and that that was my best form of communication. I found the thing I love. That’s enough.

Pre-order Perfect Issue 10 now.

Reneé Rapp for Perfect Issue 10.

Photographer: Morgan Maher

Fashion Editor: Stella Lucia

Writer: Paul Flynn