Renee Rapp felt “really, really, really depressed” in 2024.
The 25-year-old singer enjoyed huge success last year, when she toured Europe and achieved the biggest hit of her career with Not My Fault – but Renee then felt the weight of fan expectations.
Speaking to the BBC, Renee – who is dating singer Towa Bird – explained: “I was told that, basically, everybody wanted me to put a single out in the summer and an album in the fall.
“I started panicking. I was like, ‘Holy crap, how am I gonna 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.'”
Renee ultimately opted to return to work because she suffers from career insecurity, in spite of her fame and success.
The singer said: “I was like, ‘This is what somebody’s asking of me, so I can’t not fulfil that, because that means I’m not working hard enough, and that means I don’t want it enough’.”
Renee rose to prominence as Regina George in the Mean Girls Broadway musical. But the singer has had to adapt in order to become a success in the music industry.
Renee – who also played Regina in the 2024 Mean Girls movie – explained: “Being a theatre girl, transitioning to pop music can be really difficult.
“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 per cent.
“But I realised 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.”