We bring our impromptu rhyming theme day to a snarling close…
[Video]
[6.21]
Jackie Powell: “Leave Me Alone” is a song meant for walking down the street with sunglasses, activating both internal and external confidence. That’s one of the many personas that Reneé Rapp has adopted in her pop music career, but on “Leave Me Alone” she goes all in. This is a grunge-pop track at its core, with Omer Fedi and Julian Bunetta’s guitars standing out throughout the majority of the track’s 2:21 minutes. There’s a fun allusion to “Cherry Bomb” by the Runaways — “T-t-t-take it off, c-c-c-cannonball” is where I hear it the most. But there’s a cost to going down the grunge route. Rapp has a voice that shouldn’t be squandered, and I hold her to a high standard because of the instrument she has. The talk-sung verses fit the story she’s trying to tell, and that’s respectable, but the meandering melody doesn’t let Rapp’s voice take center stage. She could have taken a bolder approach, borrowed from the way Lady Gaga attacked “Perfect Celebrity,” rather than just trying to sound like Cherie Currie. But while the melody may be weak, the lyrics are not. “Leave Me Alone” pokes fun at the industry but also at Rapp herself. She knows she can be messy — for example, with the NDAs she has been signing and speaking out of pocket about — but she can’t hide her own chaos, and she’s not afraid to show it. She’s committed to being authentic and having autonomy, even if it doesn’t align with others’ expectations.
[7]
Al Varela: Renée Rapp gets two industry-favored pop producers to make a scuzzy, bratty pop-rock song that puts all of her personality traits on display: her bitchiness, her rabid queer lust, and even some attempts at painting her as a troublemaker within the industry, like blowing off her label’s demands for “the single” and an offhanded mention of her former show The Sex Lives Of College Girls getting canceled. It’s all met with the slurred, obnoxious delivery of “Leave me alone, bitch! I wanna have fun!”. Part of me thinks “Leave Me Alone” is trying a little too hard to be her mainstream breakthrough, and the transparency and desperation should have me rolling my eyes. Instead I’m mindlessly jostling my body to those crunchy guitars. I dunno what to tell you! I think she sells it!
[7]
Leah Isobel: “Leave Me Alone” audibly strains to sell Reneé as a star personality — and doesn’t quite succeed — but its desperation to be liked has a certain puppyish charm, and the cute production details in the second verse do convince me that everyone was having a good time while it was made.
[5]
Taylor Alatorre: Are mood boards “fun,” either the making or the consuming of them? Don’t ask me – I barely know what they are. But believing they can be fun is almost a prerequisite for enjoying “Leave Me Alone.” Rapp isn’t alone in approaching musical revivalism as an act of spelunking for aesthetic tokens, but she goes further than most in placing the game of curation itself at the center of the spotlight. And even then, it’s not for any of the trendily subversive Pop Art reasons, but because everything else here is too precious and small-time for the spotlight’s glare. The doses of Kesha, then Pink, then Avril-esque attitude are declarative more then demonstrative – with few exceptions, they’re siloed on the pre-“having fun” side of the ledger, for fear of accidentally summoning an out-of-place mood. Everything must be just so in Rapp’s perfect sleaze-pop dreamhouse, even if it means quadruple-posting the titular robot rock riff until it becomes divorced from the words’ meaning.
[3]
Mark Sinker: She should call herself Renée Riffs and lean into this.
[8]
Melody Esme: A brat-pop take on “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)” that sounds like early Kesha covering Shampoo’s “Trouble.” Quite fun, and funny. Even if I forget the tune, I don’t see myself forgetting “line my lips just to match my nipples.”
[7]
Andrew Karpan: Am weirdly sold on the pop-punk pivot, which radiates with sincere mawkishness. The crunching chorus feels like it comes out of nowhere and has a grinding, practically motorik feel; by the sixth time Rapp sings “Leave me alone, bitch, I wanna have fun,” the line snarls with a vacant, dystopian sadness that almost sounds like Debbie Harry if you think about it hard enough. Much like Camila Cabello’s “I Luv It,” which is the same thing but entirely different, it’s hard to imagine this doing much to convert the skeptics.
[6]
Julian Axelrod: This song sounds like this shirt I just found that says “90% angel 10% devil” and costs $160.
[5]
Dave Moore: “Recession pop” has gotten about as annoying as “indie sleaze” for its unproductive nostalgia flattening, but self-consciously foul lyrics over a bouncy Teddybears-esque approximation of classic rock are exactly what I’m looking for in my turn-of-the-’10s pastiche, macroeconomic conditions be damned.
[7]
Katherine St. Asaph: The vaguest fumes of “You Really Got Me,” the somewhat more perceptible fumes of “Shut Up and Drive,” and the big weed-fume vibe of fan_3. (Beauty tip for impressionable listeners though: The nipple lipstick thing is just a meme! Nude lips are not for everyone!)
[7]
Claire Davidson: I would be foolish to deny Reneé Rapp’s talent, but I’ll confess to having never warmed to her music. For one thing, her producers rarely afford her huge voice the space to shine; for another, while her blasé attitude isn’t necessarily a problem, she lacks the cheeky charisma needed to make it truly biting. “Leave Me Alone” is that dilemma in microcosm. If the goal was apathy, Rapp sells it tremendously, as she slurs through half her lines and seems more hungover than annoyed. Despite the song’s pop-rock aspirations, you would hardly know Rapp is a Broadway-level belter from only having heard this track, as the hook never capitalizes on her frustration with any real urgency—or with competent mixing, for that matter, as the guitars powering the song are melded into amorphous static. For all of Rapp’s exasperation, the song never elaborates on what leaves her so disillusioned with fame, so desperate is it to render her misgivings as a series of quippy one-liners. It’s not that she’s wanting for legitimate grievances with the culture industry; the constant inquiries she’s faced about her sexuality, for one, would be enough to drive anyone up a wall. Discussing that anguish, however, would require a dose of genuine vulnerability, which “Leave Me Alone” seems to reject on principle.
[5]
Hannah Jocelyn: Given that Dariacore is taken, I have to settle for saying this is Daria-coded. But really, it’s the kind of thing Daria herself would dismiss for being an overly polished version of the music she already likes. Reneé Rapp has actual attitude and a sense of irony that fits this style really well, though the line about her nipples makes me think of Tove Lo’s “Disco Tits” (a song I probably should love but find oddly, uh, stiff.) I’m not sure I want this kind of direction for someone who can actually belt, but there’s something admirable about Quinn Morgendorffer trying on her sister’s clothes.
[7]
Alex Clifton: Reneé Rapp has the perfect energy for grungy Regina George meets early Kesha. It’s fun, witty, and makes me want to throw a messy party just so I can blare this to all my neighbours. It’s also maddeningly short. A bridge would’ve done absolute wonders to get to a cathartic final verse and break up the song a bit; add that in, and this would be a full [10]. Added a point because the nipple line makes me chuckle.
[8]
Nortey Dowuona: OK, fine. Here’s your boxing gloves.
[5]