Reneé Rapp insists her songs are actually “really depressing” – despite being “sexy” on the surface.
The 25-year-old singer-and-actress says she is often misconceived as a “confident” person because of the positive spin on her woes in her lyrics, admitting she is actually feeling ” depressed and borderline don’t want to be alive” on the track At Least I’m Hot, from her latest LP BITE ME.
She told GRAMMY.com: “I’m perceived very differently from how I view myself and how I actually am in my head. That’s always so confusing to me. Everybody is like, ‘Oh, she’s so confident and embraces everything. Wow, what a sister!’ But I don’t feel that way wholeheartedly.
“I think there was a lot of admission on this album. There was a lot of admission of my being hurt, feeling not good enough, and feeling like the second choice. Even in the songs that are so irreverent and sexy, like At Least I’m Hot. If you want to boil the song down to what it is, it’s like, Well, I’m depressed and borderline don’t want to be alive, but at least I’m sexy. I wanted to make something that was a positive takeaway, or at least a cute takeaway, from that feeling.
“If you boil down any of my songs or lyrics on paper, they’re really depressing. Even the ones that you think are irreverent, empowered, and inspiring are actually depressing. They suck. They actually suck.”
However, making the album made the Mean Girls star – who is in a relationship with fellow musician Towa Bird – realise how much she loves her life.
She continued: “I used to feel like such a little freak. People would constantly just be like, ‘Ooh, that’s too much.’ Or, ‘Oh my God, why would you do that? Why would you say that?’ And then, I realised that I just needed better friends. I needed people around me who didn’t want to put me in a box and make me smaller so that they were comfortable. That’s kind of always been the case with me, and I think it’s the case for a lot of artists and creatives. You often get tossed into this little pile of being too much, too emotional, or too awkward.
“[Making this album] was the first time I liked my life. I was like, oh, f***. I love my life. I love my girlfriend. I love my friends. I love everything that I’ve done. I love being alive, even if I’m not happy all the time. I really felt that throughout the making of this album — at least the last seven or eight months, when it started to come together.”