Here is what “Snow Angel” is about: Reneé Rapp went to a party, got drugged, woke up covered in blood in a hotel bar bathroom at 5am with no memory of what happened, and her friends wouldn’t tell her. She turned that into a title track that uses snow as a metaphor for blood. Rapp has spoken about the incident in interviews following the album’s release, describing a night she still cannot fully account for. The rest of Snow Angel is what you build around an event like that when you’re twenty-three, Broadway-trained, bisexual, and so deeply in your own head that the first song is literally called “Talk Too Much” and ends with her spiralling through a spoken-word outro about whether a sign is a sign or she just hates someone. [The answer, on “Poison Poison,” is: yes, she hates them, and she has a run so gorgeous you’ll forgive the three times she had to rewrite it because Alexander 23 told her she was just listing facts.] Never know who you’re gonna get, she sings on “Gemini Moon,” and the sentence hangs there without its “you.” The album does that a lot, leaves things half-out, makes you lean in.
What Snow Angel actually does: swings. Hard. Between funny and devastating, usually in the same song. “Pretty Girls” is her most up-tempo track and also a sad one about straight women hypersexualising her (you know babe if I wanted to I totally would, cool, thanks). “Tummy Hurts” contains the line I just want some recognition for having good tits and a big heart, which is very funny until you realise she’s not kidding. “I Wish” is about watching the person who taught you to breathe take their last breath when you’re ten.
Then “Snow Angel” itself. Quiet verses, a single piano note, then a choir and a guitar and Rapp’s voice climbing into something that isn’t quite screaming but isn’t singing either. You don’t listen to that track so much as you flinch when it hits. The line I met a boy, he broke my heart / I blame him ’cause it’s easier / But I still look for him in her arrives late, almost as an afterthought, and somehow that hits harder than any belt she throws.
She can hold a note until it breaks, obviously. Broadway trained, Mean Girls Regina George, the whole thing. “The Wedding Song” marries a triumphant chorus with forever won’t last sighed like a secret. “Willow” wraps itself around a friend who’s crying and offers to take over the weeping duties. “23” closes the record with I hope that I’ll see twenty-four / I hope I’ll understand me more / I hope my bed is off the floor, small wants that pile up. Then she says: I hope that I can care less, but I’m afraid to care less.
That’s the album. Or it isn’t. She doesn’t seem sure either. A twenty-three-year-old who knows caring less would save her some trouble, and also knows she won’t do it. That’s not a verdict. That’s just where the record leaves you.
Listen to: “Snow Angel,” “Poison Poison,” “Pretty Girls,” “I Wish” Skip if: you need your pop stars to pretend they have it figured out
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