Reneé Rapp wants girlfriend Towa Bird to ‘ruin her life’ on new song ‘Shy’

Reneé Rapp pulls no punches on her sophomore record Bite Me, but on new song “Shy”, she hopes her girlfriend Towa Bird will be the one getting a little rough.

Over gritty guitar thrums and classic pop-rock production, the famously forthright Rapp admits to being easy to p*ss off, a little bit violent, and good at swinging hands in a bar fight.

Yet musician Towa Bird – who Rapp met in early 2023 – made her a little mousy.

“It’s hard to make me nervous, much easier to p*ss me off. But whenever you’re around bae, I kiss the ground you’re walkin’ on,” she trills on the verse one lyrics of “Shy”.

The chorus is a little bit explosive, a little bit risqué, and a lot of Reneé Rapp showing off her wildly underappreciated vocals.

“Don’t handle me with care. When you’re pullin’ my hair, baby, ruin my life,” she demands.

“I want it bad, I swear that I’m really not scared. I’m just a little bit shy.”

Rapp first explained that “Shy” was about Towa Bird in an interview with the BBC, admitting that she felt like a “nervous wreck” around her “British princess”.

“I am not a shy person whatsoever, so that made me realise how madly in love I was with her,” she shared. “I’d just got out of a relationship and I was so relieved to be on my own, then I was smacked in the face by these feelings.”

“Not only is she my best friend and my most trusted confidant, but also she wants me to win just as much as I want her to win,” she added. “And that feeling is so scarce.”

Elsewhere on “Shy”, Rapp admits to her aggressive tendencies – Buddy, the owner of a bus touring company, knows that more than most – but teased how Bird has experienced her hands in other ways.

“I’m violent when I’m drinkin’, I’m violent when I’m sober too,” go the lyrics of verse two. “I’m useful in a bar fight, but my hands work differently on you.”

Rapp hammers the point home over a cheerleader chant on the song’s bridge, in which she urges her lover to “take off all [her] clothes”.

“Come on and cross my heart and hope to die, I’m thinkin’ somewhere in between your thighs,” she shouts. “I wanna mark it up like, ‘X and O’, ‘Cause baby, I’ll do things your exes won’t.”

The lyrics to “Shy” aren’t the only ones leaving the internet a little slack-jawed today, either. On “Kiss It Kiss It”, Bite Me’s biggest pop moment, she breathily jokes: “I think wе almost made a baby. I mean, we can’t, but we came so close.”

Now, I won’t do a deep dive into the baby making process here, but two women can’t have a baby together without just a little intervention.

Rapp’s Bite Me might be the most substantive bit of pop released this week, but there’s plenty more sapphic songs out today too.

Chappell Roan’s yearning ballad “The Subway” has finally pulled out of the station after being teased for almost a year, while Demi Lovato is back with some recession-indicating EDM pop in the form of “Fast”.

Your favourite pop star’s biggest fan and bisexual babe Slayyyter is back with “BEAT UP CHANEL$”, while LGBTQ+ ally Hayley Williams – of Paramore and big orange combover fame – just surprise-dropped a bunch of new songs.

As one put it best on X: “Reneé Rapp, Chappell Roan, and Hayley Williams all releasing new music on the same night is kinda like infinity war for sapphics everywhere actually.”

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