We get it—there is simply too much. So this year, we are giving our editors a last-minute opportunity to plug the things that maybe got away. See all the things you really should have read, watched, or listened to—as well as more of our year in review coverage—here.
I’m a devoted fan of actor Reneé Rapp, who plays the supremely bitchy queer sorority princess Leighton on HBO’s The Sex Lives of College Girls, but I’ll be honest: When I heard she was also a musician, I assumed it was yet another case of a Hollywood-girlie side project that wouldn’t necessarily be...well, good. (Actually, why am I picking on Hollywood girlies when it’s usually leading men who have extremely average bands on the side?) In any case, chalk it up to extreme ignorance, because once I actually listened to Rapp’s debut EP, Everything to Everyone, which came out in November, I was absolutely hooked.
It’s fair to say that I would probably be a knee-jerk fan of any queer pop singer, and indeed, the fact that Rapp is openly bisexual definitely makes me more excited about parsing her lyrics. Unlike the #Gaylor conspiracy, it doesn’t require too much close reading to locate the queer subtext in Rapp’s album; the song “What Can I Do” is all about the experience of holding your friend’s hand while your boyfriend is in the bathroom—as a totally straight thing, of course—and I must say, I may be blessedly done with the chasing-straight-girls phase of my life, but the song absolutely hits nonetheless.
Other songs, like “Don’t Tell My Mom”—a heartbreaking ode to trying to seem okay to the people in your life when you’re feeling very much the opposite—and the raw yet upbeat “Colorado”—which explores the perennially seductive promise of moving to a new city and becoming a whole new person—hit me directly in the solar plexus when I first listened to them. And then, of course, there’s “Too Well.” If I may overshare about my life, this song feels like the antidote to Olivia Rodrigo’s “Good 4 U,” which I blasted at top volume while driving circles around Austin after my last breakup. Where Rodrigo’s song is all scream-singing catharsis, “Too Well” is about the next phase of a breakup, the delicate yet vital one where you’re finally, blessedly starting to heal and able to hear your ex’s name without going totally bonkers (most of the time, anyway).
I’m 29 now, and there are times when I feel totally ancient and alienated by dominant queer pop culture (literally, what is Girl in Red?), but when I found out that Rapp had a devoted enough standom to sell out her first tour within minutes, I was thrilled to know that I wasn’t the only one over-identifying with her lyrics. (Some of the people at her shows have to be nearing their 30s too, right?) Rapp’s assertion on the title track that “I can’t be everything to everyone” is a lesson that way too many people—and in particular, way too many women—still need to learn, and if I’d adopted that motto in my early 20s, I probably could have saved myself a lot of expensive therapy.
I don’t know if Everything to Everyone is an album I’ll play for the rest of my life or if it’s just the one that’s captured my heart (and my Spotify playlist) this holiday season, but I know it made me (a) dance, (b) cry, and (c) feel things, in that order, which is really all you can ask of pop music. At just 22, though, Rapp likely has a whole lot of albums ahead of her, and I can’t wait to humiliatingly hyper-fixate on every one of them.