Photo: Jojo Whilden/Paramount
Once Reneé Rapp is done dominating the Mean Girls press tour, she’ll be staring down a summer on the festival circuit — including dates at Coachella, Hangout, Governors Ball, and Bonnaroo so far. So here’s a suggestion to keep the fun going: Rapp should just sing some Mean Girls songs at the fests. She might not mind — she told the Cut last year that she only stepped into the role of Regina George on Broadway because it’s “a great launching pad” for her music career. Now, maybe it can launch her further.
She can do her own stuff, too, of course. But after the winter of Mean Girls, does everyone know that Rapp is a singer-songwriter too? Or on the flip side, will the people wandering the festival grounds stoned during her set know that the woman onstage is that girl from Mean Girls they saw on TikTok? She is everywhere right now precisely thanks to the perfect storm of attention around the film and her music career. It only makes sense to blend them together.
This only works because some of the Mean Girls songs actually rock. Have you heard “World Burn”? Just imagine Rapp emerging from a group of dancers, singing, “My name is Regina George …” A little camp, a little badass. Many actor-musicians are too earnest to pull this off, but not Rapp, who has been fresh out of fucks since she started promoting this movie. She could start belting a Mean Girls cut in the middle of the Coachella Valley and sell it as totally normal and cool. (And she probably won’t even have to get back into character as Regina to do it.)
It’s a win-win-win. Rapp uses Mean Girls to further boost her music career; Mean Girls gets more attention; and, if all goes well, we get another viral Rapp moment out of it all. Oh, and if she really wants to give? Imagine how the “Buddy” monologue would play in front of a crowd.