Reneé Rapp has been blowing up on TikTok for a while now. Or at least on my side of TikTok… If you don’t know her, her work is worth checking out. Rapp is a double threat: an actress and a singer. She’s mostly known for playing Leighton in Mindy Kaling’s The Sex Lives of College Girls and for taking over the role of Regina George in the Broadway musical Mean Girls (she’ll also reprise her role in the movie version of the musical).
In 2022, after teasing fans for a while, Rapp released her debut EP Everything to Everyone, with seven songs. In early 2023, she came out with a deluxe version, which included a brand-new song and an extended version of an existing track.
So here are a few of my favourite lyrics from these songs that I think are 100% worth listening to.
“But I’m too scared to dеlete all our videos/’Cause it’s real once everyone knows” – “In the KitcheN”
In In The Kitchen, Rapp narrates the experiences of someone post-break-up. With these lyrics, I feel like Rapp perfectly encapsulates Gen Z relationships nowadays. Everyone has looked at someone’s Instagram and wondered: “Oh, they’ve deleted their pictures together; have they broken up?” It’s such a specific thing, but it makes her storytelling much more relatable. That’s what I adore about her music, actually. She turns the smallest experiences into masterpieces that take you through a rollercoaster of emotions in one single song. You know exactly what she’s talking about. So you can feel exactly what she was feeling. And this is what music is supposed to do, right?
“I wonder if he notices the things that I can/You don’t even get it, no, you don’t understand” – “What Can I Do”
As someone who’s had a crush on a friend, this song hits hard. What Can I Do is a queer anthem. By talking about the simplest moments shared between two friends, Rapp’s song perfectly captures what it feels like to be a queer woman and have a crush on a friend, which leaves you wondering: what can I do? And these particular lyrics take me right there. To the overthinking, the wondering and the hopeful wishing…
“But it’s an empty dream, that sh*t’s not meant for me/I’d choose the devil I know over the heaven I don’t” – “Colorado”
Colorado is Rapp’s most upbeat song in this EP and my favourite for a while. Once she gets to this chorus, the song takes you by surprise. And again, you can feel it. Rapp sings about dropping everything and moving to a new state to start a new life. She fantasizes about meeting the perfect guy or girl for her and staying there. But, by the song’s end, Rapp realizes that that was all a fantasy and that change is hard, and she’s not ready to give up. At least, that was my interpretation of it.
“‘Cause you split my world in two/Now I’m half the one you knew/And I know that we got different views/But we’re lookin’ at the same moon” – “Moon”
You’ve probably noticed I adore songs and lyrics that can be relatable. Even if I have not had these experiences, I feel like Rapp takes me there. The way she sings, the stories she tells in her music and the energy put into each song make me feel like I’ve been there. Like I’ve been dumped or in love. Like, I know exactly what it feels like to watch the moon and think about someone you loved. And it is this specificity and attention to detail that makes these stories universally understandable.
“I’ve spent three hundred sixty-five days/And fifty-two weeks in my brain/Goin’ over the same thing/That girl said when we were in fourth-grade” – “Bruises”
Bruises is Rapp’s latest song, released in the deluxe version of her EP, highly anticipated by her fans on social media. In Bruises, Rapp sings about feelings in her relationship with herself and her friends. Her anxiety and how people perceive her. These lyrics, in particular, resonate with me in a big way. I love storytelling and would love to be able to write music, and I feel like Rapp, with her songs, can put into words these feelings and situations that sometimes have no explanation. And finding myself in these songs is precisely why I love this EP so much!
Everything to Everyone also includes a few more songs, such as “Don’t Tell My Mom,” “Everything to Everyone (intro),” and “Too Well,” which are also beautifully written by Rapp and worth listening to.