Be(be) Aggressive…With Your 70s Influence: Bebe Rexha Relies on a Go-To Pop Formula for Her Third Album

For whatever reason, Bebe Rexha’s nonstop bop of a sophomore album, Better Mistakes, landed with a thud on the Billboard 200 when it was released back in May of 2021, debuting at #140 and fizzling out from there. Almost a full two years later, evidently taking that album name to heart, Rexha has decided to keep making “better mistakes” with her third record, Bebe (a self-titled record in the tradition of Whitney or janet. or even Britney Jean). As if her pop hits of the past were ever really “mistakes.” Nonetheless, the point is, she’s willing to keep “plugging away” and experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t with audiences. Except that there’s not much in the way of “experimentation” on this particular record, as it’s somewhat apparent she wasn’t feeling quite as “adventurous” with regard to the concept behind it. For, as so many before her, she was “inspired” by “70s retro style.” To hit listeners over the head with that trope, Rexha doesn’t just rely on the sounds of the decade, but the visuals as well. Hence, an album cover that sees her in full feathered hair mode à la Farrah Fawcett. Of course, Madonna was already resuscitating that look/70s sonic trend in 2005 with Confessions on a Dance Floor. But sure, everything old can always be made “new” again. Kylie Minogue also recently made a similar maneuver with Disco in 2020, albeit with a less favorable outcome than what Rexha pulls off on Bebe.

Kicking off with the first single, “Heart Wants What It Wants” (and, speaking of Selena Gomez songs, Rexha actually did write a song for her—2013’s “Like A Champion”), the tone of the album is immediately established as “sassy” and “playful.” The video to accompany it also finds Rexha making no apologies for emulating Madonna’s aforementioned Confessions on a Dance Floor era by styling Rexha’s hair with what M would call the perfect “weenie roll” curls and leotard. Opening in a way that reminds one of Ti West’s X as Rexha hops into the back of an ultra molester-y 70s van with a film crew, the Madonna correlation further manifests in the fact that the video is directed by Michael Haussman, known for his work on Madonna’s companion videos, “Take A Bow” and “You’ll See.” It’s clearly not a coincidence, as Rexha gushed openly about Madonna on the red carpet at the Grammys on February 5th, citing “Hung Up” as her favorite track of all-time from the Queen of Pop. Two weeks later, the release of the video for “Heart Wants What It Wants” made that all the more obvious as she re-creates M’s leotard and heels look (rounded out by a pair of purple tights) inside the living room of a house with a lodge-like aesthetic (the aesthetic of houses in the 70s, for some arbitrary reason). The difference is, Rexha has the film crew capturing her entire dance (not to say that Madonna doesn’t have the same thing happening in “Hung Up,” it’s simply that we’re not supposed to know it; there’s no “meta” element at play in her dance studio—it’s just her against the mirror…and the music, as Brit would say).

Rexha’s filmed choreography segues into what we eventually come to see as a rehearsal for a more elaborately-staged (and costumed) performance later on. The crew’s errant signs of titillation make it seem as though they’re filming a porno (again, very X) rather than a fully-clothed dance session. Or maybe there’s just something about 70s aesthetics and camera crews that make everything seem porn-y. In any event, as Rexha shrugs, “My heart only wants what it wants, what it wants, what it wants/‘Til it doesn’t/I can’t promise you love it was love, it was love, it was love/‘Til it wasn’t.” So despite her “vintage stylings,” Rexha conveys a very modern take on “love.” And yes, Rexha additionally appears to want to further align herself with Selena Gomez by not only naming this song similarly, but also channeling the 70s spirit of Gomez’s 2017 video for “Bad Liar,” complete with her own “modern” take on the decade (a.k.a. a lesbian tryst).

The following song on the album, “Miracle Man,” finds Rexha adopting a tone that makes her sounds all too familiar. By the time the chorus rolls around—“I need a miracle man to make me believe in love again/Who can make me believe in lovе again/Say amen (yeah), amen (yеah)/‘Cause a woman like me ain’t easy to please”—one finally understands that said “familiarity” stems from how much she sounds like Ellie Goulding (and maybe she partially learned how to emulate Goulding while opening for her on 2016’s Delirium World Tour). Making for yet another pop star lending herself to the strong undercurrent of influences on Bebe. But, of course, mainly Madonna. And as Madonna would, Rexha wields religious analogies throughout this song, with her unlikely Miracle Man being akin to something in the vein of achieving “spiritual ecstasy.” Thus, comparing this man to a being as mythic as God when she demands, “Gimme faith, gimme faith, gimme faith, gimme faith in you/‘Cause I’d rather be lonely than the wrong one, hold me, baby.” Kali Uchis says pretty much the same thing on “Loner” (“That’s why I’d rather be a loner/Yeah, I’d rather be alone/I don’t even want to know ya/I don’t want to be known”). For it’s becoming an increasingly common declaration among women who would prefer not to settle for less merely for the sake of “settling down” (hear also: Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers”). Rexha further drenches us in sexual-religious innuendo when she urges, “Push me up against the wall and make me glow/Drink your holy water, sip it slow/I can feel you drippin’ down my soul.” Madonna would surely approve of such lyrical content, with the sentiments matching her own on a track like 2015’s “Holy Water.”

“Satellite,” the third official single from Bebe, was fittingly released on 4/20. After all, not only does the song feature Snoop Dogg, but it’s also an ode to being “high as a satellite.” Granted, probably not as high as one of Elon’s. Produced by Joe Janiak (who, yes, has worked with Ellie Goulding), the uptempo rhythm of the song is not exactly in keeping with “stoner pace,” but to honor “the lifestyle,” Rexha was sure to make the accompanying video as trippily animated as possible. Think Dua Lipa’s “Hallucinate” (which itself owes an aesthetic debt to Madonna’s “Dear Jessie”). But also The Jetsons…and Rexha’s animated form does certainly look very much like Jane Jetson with feathered blonde hair. Beamed up into a spaceship thanks to some help from Snoop (who knows all about interplanetary travel), Rexha finds herself in a bong-shaped vessel with little bud-shaped crew members who sometimes more closely resemble turds than nugs. But what do such details matter when you’re “high as a satellite”? And, since David Bowie is the original “Spaceman,” it’s only right that Rexha should give a nod to “Space Oddity” by saying, “Ground control, do you copy?” And so, weed gets another loving homage placed into the annals of pop culture—though “Satellite” still has nothing on Smiley Face.

Rexha switches gears back to obsessing over love (or at least lust) with a human rather than an inanimate drug on “When It Rains.” Considering Rexha’s sexual-spiritual innuendos on “Miracle Man,” it should come as no surprise that this particular track is merely an analogy for orgasming. Hence, the chorus: “When it rains/I’m a tidal wave on a midnight train to you/When it rains/You’re like God to me, we found heaven in a hotel room.” Sounds similar to finding love in a hopeless place. Elsewhere, Rexha pulls from Peaches’ lyrical canon by announcing, “I just wanna go off in the backseat/You love makin’ me scream/Let’s fuck all the pain we’ve been through/When it rains, only when it rains/I come right back to you.” Translation: when she gets conned into forgetting about all his other bad behavior thanks to his ability to make her cum, she can’t help but keep returning for more. ‘Cause when it “rains” for a woman, it pours good fortune for a man. The fortune of all his other shortcomings being excused thanks to his dick-maneuvering abilities. As Madonna once phrased it in her own rain-soaked insinuation, “I’m glad you brought your raincoat/I think it’s beginning to rain.” Capisci? ‘Cause, like Bebe, she’s about to cum.

However, when a man inevitably fails to deliver (usually both sexually and emotionally), Rexha is more likely to “call on herself” for “self-satisfaction.” Again promoting the sologamist philosophy “trend” that kicked off around the time when Ariana Grande released “thank u, next,” Rexha insists throughout “Call On Me,” “If I need a lover/Someone to hold me/Satisfy all my needs/If I need a lover/Someone to save me/Someone to set me free/I call on me.” As Kali Uchis puts it on “After the Storm,” “So if you need a hero/Just look in the mirror/No one’s gonna save you now/So you better save yourself.” That applies to self-pleasure as much as anything else. With production from Burns (who previously worked with Rexha on 2021’s “Sacrifice,” in addition to providing some of the best offerings on Lady Gaga’s Chromatica), the danceable beats add to the celebration of self-sufficiency that dominates the second single of the album (though no video was released to go with it). As an added dig, Rexha informs the person she ditched in favor of herself, “You never made me feel like heaven/Never made me feel this high.” For just as much as one can “break their heart themselves” (as Bebe would say), they can also boost their own mood and ego better than most others can.

Rexha keeps the party vibe going with “I’m Good (Blue)” featuring David Guetta—the song that brought her out of hibernation at the end of summer 2022. Sampling from Eiffel 65’s 1998 hit “Blue (Da Ba Dee),” Rexha continues the trend (unfortunately also embraced by Kim Petras and Nicki Minaj on “Alone”) of repurposing 90s dance music for the next century. And yet, something about the message and delivery of the song reminds one of a ditty Black Eyed Peas would come up with (think “I Gotta Feeling” but less embarrassing) as she asserts, “I’m good, yeah, I’m feelin’ alright/Baby, I’ma have the best fuckin’ night of my life/And wherever it takes me, I’m down for the ride.” Even if that ride leads her to do a one-eighty with regard to the attitude she projected during “Call On Me,” which is exactly what happens on “Visions (Don’t Go)”—revealing Rexha at her neediest. Unapologetically begging, “Baby, please, baby, please, baby, please don’t go/Stay with me, stay with me ‘cause I need you close/Every second you’re gone, my whole world turns cold.” At least Camila Cabello made this sentiment sound slightly “cuter” on “Don’t Go Yet” from Familia (and apparently it was cute enough to eventually lure Shawn Mendes back in), urging, “Oye, don’t go yet, don’t go yet/What you leavin’ for when my night is yours?/Just a little more, don’t go yet.”

The theme of “Visions (Don’t Go)” (the title driving the Camila connection further home) transitions easily into “I’m Not High, I’m In Love,” a song that starts out with a symphonic timbre that echoes the one on Dua Lipa’s (yet another Albanian pop princess) “Love Again” (which samples White Town’s “Your Woman”). In fact, one could argue that Bebe is Rexha’s attempt at her own version of Future Nostalgia. The 70s-infused dance tracks and Madonna inspiration also being part of the latter’s “mood board.” As for “I’m Not High, I’m In Love,” like Tove Lo before her insisting, “Baby listen please, I’m not on drugs/I’m just in love,” Rexha, too, wants to make sure people know, “I’m not high, I’m in love/I’m on fire, you’re my drug…/Now I see the colors dancing all around the room/Kaleidoscope of lovers and it led me back to you.” Layered with instrumental breaks that make it perfect for dancing (while probably on drugs) beneath the disco ball, Rexha, with the help of producer Ido Zmishlany, re-creates the feeling of being in love through the complement of the lyrics and sound. And yes, love (whether reciprocated or unrequited) often feels like a drug-addled (or drug withdrawal) sensation that perhaps only Tove Lo knows how best to reproduce in a song medium (hear also: “Habits [Stay High]”).

The disco tinge persists on “Blue Moon” as Rexha keeps waxing poetic on the topic of, what else, being in love (good dick evidently wipes the sologamy entirely out of a girl’s mind). But instead of remaining entirely disco, an array of guitar stabs toward the end vary up the sound more than anywhere else on the record. Titled “Blue Moon” in honor of that beloved expression, “Once in a blue moon…” Rexha sings, “Tell me how I could live without you/When a love like this only comes once/So tell mе how I could breathe without you/When a love like this only comes once/In a blue moon.” For those wondering at this point in the record, after so many effusive love songs, if Rexha actually is in love, the answer is an emphatic yes. As she told Rolling Stone, “I’m in love. That’s all you’re gonna get to know.” But modern life being what it is, those who want to know are aware that the person she’s referring to is Keyan Safyari, a cinematographer she’s been dating since 2020, and who also directed the video for “Satellite.”

Perhaps the reason such details fly under the radar, however, is because Rexha suffers from what is little known as Rita Ora Syndrome (and, funnily enough, the two did collaborate together on 2018’s ill-advised “Girls”). Meaning that despite constantly putting out a steady stream of hit singles, she’s still not considered very “mainstream.” As though that strange phenomenon didn’t connect Ora and Rexha enough, both were born to Albanian parents (though Rexha’s mother was born in the United States). Rexha’s “lack of fame” is among the subjects she’s publicly acknowledged of late, along with the commentary about her weight gain. Which came on the heels of Ariana Grande’s anti-body shaming video (despite the celebrity-industrial complex—and capitalism itself—thriving on the shaming of bodies, whatever the current trends in shape might be). Indeed, Rexha even said seeing that video moved her to tears, especially the part where Grande mentions that you never know what someone is going through that might make their body look a certain way that’s deemed “unhealthy” by the public. It struck a chord with Rexha, whose own weight gain has stemmed in part from being on meds to treat her polycystic ovary syndrome.

That and her newfound love of weed is surely at least part of what has her in such a reflective mood, particularly when the pace slows its roll on “Born Again.” An apropos title considering Bebe is her bid for a Billboard success do-over after Better Mistakes. More of a cheesy 90s power ballad than anything resembling a song from the 70s, Rexha opts to take some of Lana Del Rey’s key phrases for this particular song—such as, “We were all born to die” and “You should come meet me on the flipside.” For those unversed in Lana, the first lyric smacks of “Born to Die” and the second of a lesser-known song from Ultraviolence called “Flipside” (wherein she says, “Maybe on the flipside I could catch you again”). Even her talk of “Heaven” (“Forget the afterlife/Who needs Heaven when you’re here tonight?”) is out of the Lana playbook, what with LDR often crooning sweet nothings like, “Heaven is a place on Earth with you” and “Say yes to Heaven/Say yes to me.” In any event, Rexha’s bottom line in this song is: “Every time you kiss me, I’m born again.”

But every time Rexha veers too far over on the codependency side of things, she reins it back in—as she did with “Call On Me.” To return to that defiant sort of independence, Rexha provides “I Am” as the penultimate track on Bebe. Just as Miley Cyrus with “Wonder Woman” or Halsey with “I Am Not A Woman, I’m A God” or Dua Lipa with “Boys Will Be Boys,” Rexha affirms the complexity and overall superiority of the “fairer” sex as she proclaims, “But I am a woman, I am a rebel, I am a god/I danced with the devil/I am a lover, I am a legend/If I am everything, why am I not everything to you?” The message of empowerment geared toward women is obvious—and was, unsurprisingly, incited by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. A totally out-of-left-field Supreme Court decision that got women everywhere thinking. About their rights, their continued status as second-class citizens and how things could potentially become so much worse as a result. The ripple effects of misogyny that might be allowed to thrive anew within this context. Ironically, it was in the 70s—the decade so many female pop stars like to turn to for sonic salvation on their own modern-day records—that Roe v. Wade granted women abortion rights in the first place. As for Rexha, the overturning of the case prompted her to take a scrutinizing look at her Albanian background, a culture, she admits, where “the men eat first. The men speak. It’s all about the men, and then the women come in.” If there’s still any oxygen left to breathe.

So it is that she derides of the invisible male she’s addressing on “I Am,” “Don’t wanna go all in/But too afraid to let me go/I guess devourin’ all the power is all you’ve ever known/You’re sittin’ on an empty throne.” One throne that has never remained empty, however, is the country-pop one—reigned over long-standingly by the adored Dolly Parton. And, despite “Seasons” being more influenced by Stevie Nicks, it is Parton who joins Rexha on it (so yeah, Rexha achieved a few collab dreams on Bebe).

An appropriate choice for closing the record, “Seasons” is a melancholic lamentation on the passage of time. To be sure, there is something “Dolly-esque” about Rexha’s vocal intonations (particularly on this single), so it’s not totally astounding for her to collaborate with the country icon for “Seasons.” To boost the single, Rexha shot a black and white video with Dolly, directed by Natalie Simmons, during which the pair stands side by side singing into their microphones. The shots alternate between scenes of the duo dressed in black or white ensembles (you know, to match the black and white film) as they croon, “I lie awake inside a dream/And I run, run, run away from me/The seasons change right under my feet/I’m still the same, same, same, same old me.”

The reflection on time, in addition to the cadence of the vocals, also reminds one of Stevie Nicks as she sings on Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” “Can the child within my heart rise above?/Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?/Can I handle the seasons of my life?” and “Time makes you bolder/Even children get older/I’m gettin’ older, too.” Except that Rexha wanted to explore a concept where, in spite of getting older and “knowing that you need to change… you’re not changing.” Ergo that “same old me” line. One that very much fits in with the current discourse on the disappearance of middle age. While generations technically get older, but keep embodying this sort of Peter Pan syndrome that baby boomers and their forebears never had the luxury of implementing, is it really as bittersweet as it once was to watch “seasons change”? Or more fucked-up and Black Mirror-y than anything else?

However Rexha truly feels about it, she might never truly let on. For the entire name of the game on Bebe is to be just generically accessible enough while never revealing too many specifics. It is in this way as well that Rexha synthesizes a hodgepodge of musical styles and even visual looks for this record (somehow managing to appear facially similar to Britney Spears on the cover, and facially similar to Lily Allen in the “Seasons” video), all while never totally losing her own distinct personality in the process. At the same time, she’s studied the industry long enough to hedge all her bets on following every pop formula by the book to resuscitate her clout after Better Mistakes.

Already a chameleonic force in the pop arena just three albums into her career, it will be interesting to see what avenues Rexha swerves toward next—though one can only hope it maintains its EDM slant (for that’s what “going 70s” really means in the present musical landscape).