Like Rita Ora, Bebe Rexha is that artist who has been releasing singles for years and years, yet many are hard-pressed to list an actual song by her when given her name (though some wish they could forget her being part of the collaboration known as “Girls” back in 2018). With Better Mistakes, it feels like all of that is changing—that this is Rexha’s proverbial watershed moment. So yeah, move over Dua Lipa, you’re not the only Albanian game in town.
Looking like someone who might open a Beetlejuice theme bar on the album’s cover, Rexha isn’t afraid to extend that ghoulishness onto the contents of the record, which opens with “Break My Heart Myself,” featuring, of all people, Travis Barker (solely on drums, of course). Immediately addressing one of the key themes of the album, Rexha delves into how she needs absolutely no one to help her hurt herself—to break her heart—she does it quite well all on her own, even with the Klonopin to theoretically numb the pain. So it is that she announces, “No, I don’t need your help/To make me sick, to make me ill/I don’t need anybody else/‘Cause I can break my heart myself.” With the video being mostly unremarkable (especially compared to others she’s released from Better Mistakes), the one moment of Rexha grandeur is when she eyeballs her own glass-encased heart with lust, ready to break open the box with her trusty sledgehammer. So now, yes, one Albanian has a song called “Break My Heart Myself” and another Albanian a song called just “Break My Heart.” It’s at your discretion to choose which sentiment is more masochistic.
The motif of the first track leads seamlessly into “Sabotage,” another self-loathing anthem with an even more memorable video to match. Featuring Rexha in different rooms of a rather elegant house that start to literally blow up as a manifestation of every time she “fucks it up,” we’re given insight into the personality of someone who would prefer to destroy things themselves rather than have a relationship be destroyed by another. After everything explodes, the walls start to actually cave in, which is where Rexha’s “matches in my back pocket” come in as she lights one up and ends up burning the whole house down. After all, it’s as she says, “I’m the queen of burnin’ bridges/I will only let you down.”
On that note, “Trust Fall” comes next with Rexha exploring further reasons for why she might have a tendency to destroy everything she touches, so to speak. For part of that issue stems from being incapable of trust. As she commented herself, “I don’t really trust anybody—especially being in the industry. In life in general, we need to be careful who we trust. I started dating my boyfriend, and I just wanted a solid ‘I hope I can trust you. I want to fall and I want to trust, so would you help me?’” These feelings are further examined with a sardonic lilt via the lyrics, “Oh, I wanna trust, then I wanna fall/Tell me that you’ll catch me when I trust fall.” And naturally, as a newly-minted bona fide pop star, she gives a little nod to Madonna by adding, “Say you swear, there’s nothing left to fear/Love me in my worst regardless, call my name like it’s a prayer.”
The more “rock-tinged” “Better Mistakes” offers another semi-sarcastic side of Rexha as she goes on about all the ways in which she could fuck up a little more “gracefully.” Since one must continue to fuck up on a perpetual basis regardless of age. In a deeper tone, she says at one point, “I should get a real job, talk a little more shit/Burn one more bridge, better mistakes/Have another breakdown, and not be afraid/To get that tattoo, cover up that name.” She elevates the pitch of her vocals for the chorus, chanting, “The night before the morning after, oh-oh/Somewhere between the tears and laughter/I don’t realize ’til it’s too late, oh wait/I should probably make better mistakes.” Considering that Rexha is Brooklyn-born and recently entered her thirties, this song makes a lot of sense, for it is the NYC-based in their twenties who tend to make full-stop bad mistakes as opposed to “better” ones that seem only to come with the “wisdom” of age.
Following this, it’s move over, Elton John (though he never will)—because there’s a new song called “Sacrifice” in the mix. The mid-90s dance sound of this track discusses a girl’s desire to be the sole subject of attention out on the floor when she finally locks eyes with the guy she’s most attracted to. She warns, “Say goodbye/To every other girl in the night behind you/Now you’re mine/Tell me what you willin’ to sacrifice, ooh.” In video format, this translates into Rexha having vampire fangs as she bites into a man’s neck and she and her girls seem to have their fun at a hospital where the blood flows freely. Soon, they’re at an underground club with a neon sign shaped as fanged lips with the words Bite Me scrawled across them.
From one 90s genre to another, “My Dear Love” featuring Ty Dolla $ign and Trevor Daniel possesses a certain grunge tone (think: “Black Hole Sun”). Wielding more of her biting sarcasm, “my dear love” here is intended as an additional barb to the line, “You got it all fucked up, my dear love.” As in: don’t get it twisted, you can’t keep playing me and expect me to keep taking it with a smile. As Rexha remarked, “This was kind of my anthem of being like, ‘If you think you’re going to keep messing with me and playing these games with me, you have it all fucked up. You don’t know me, my dear love.’” As Justin Timberlake once paraphrased (as though conjuring it upon himself), Rexha repeats here as well: “What comes around goes ’round, my love.”
The don’t fuck with me attitude of “My Dear Love” blends perfectly into the defiant “Die For a Man” featuring Lil Uzi Vert. And, because, it’s unfortunately still so important that women reiterate to other women that men ain’t shit and shouldn’t define their worth in any way by them, Rexha describes, “I used to think that I needed a guy/To help me navigate this frightening life/And every time they broke my hеart/I thought that I would die/But I survived, yeah, I’m alivе.” Proof that even good dick doesn’t have to imprison you. Especially with the array of apparatuses currently on the market. To drive home the seriousness of not only not needing a man, but no longer being willing to change herself to please one, Rexha sings “I would never die for a man, die for a man, die for a man/No, I would never cry for a man, cry for a man, change who I am/Even if I love him, hopelessly adored him, you should know that/I-I-I, I would never die for a man.” But based on her fluidity announcement, would she for a woman?
The somewhat antithetical statement to “Die For A Man” is “Baby, I’m Jealous.” Using the concept of the song for an intro to the video that plays into how social media only ends up making every girl jealous, she sits around the table with her friends, including Doja Cat and Charli D’Amelio and wishes she was from a different time when these things weren’t around. She declares, “I need zero technology.” All the while, the Asian woman watching them lies in wait to present Rexha with a fortune cookie (it’s sort of a riff on Freaky Friday with the “fortune cookie magic” element—which one is surprised to find isn’t somehow deemed as too racist, but then, the video came out in late 2020, before the Atlanta shooting this year). Upon opening her fortune, Rexha goes poof! into a different time. Starting in London 1969—the worst period to go back to if Rexha was hoping for monogamy—the same restaurant owner watches her jealousy continue to flare up from afar as she sings, “Went from beautiful to ugly/‘Cause insecurity told me you don’t love me/All it takes is a girl above me/On your timeline to make me nothing/This is me, a woman in dichotomy/I love me until I don’t.”
Speaking to how so many women define their worth by the fake world of social media (or even the “real” one filled with those who have “respectable” jobs), Rexha’s revelation that it might have actually been worse in previous eras finds her grateful to be back at the table with her friends. Because yes, for as lopsided as this century continues to be, women are still better off in this one than the twentieth.
The midtempo “On The Go” featuring Pink Sweat$ and Lunay is a laid-back jam that highlights the challenges of being a singer on the road (not that being on the road has been much of an issue of late) and in a new relationship that’s difficult to nurture without actually being there in person to do so. Thus, Rexha laments, “I wanna get to know you better, but I can’t get off this phone/I wanna love you/But I’m on the go.” Lunay then lends the Spanish flavor to the track that makes it one of the unique standouts of Better Mistakes.
Going back to her more “alt-rock” vibe (though it’s more like undertones of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone”), “Death Row” reneges on everything said in “Die For A Man.” But she already mentioned before that she was a “woman in dichotomy,” which is why she feels free to announce, “I know that it’s crazy to cry for you/I know that it’s crazy to die for you/But I do it tonight…/And I know that it’s crazy to cry for you/Sayin’ shit, like, ‘Baby, I’d die for you’/But I’d do it tonight, night.” The caveat? “If you die, die, die for me too.”
Like Metric before her, Rexha now has a song called “Empty”—but the subject is much different than the mere urging to “shake your head, it’s empty.” Instead, Rexha acknowledges her battle with depressive episodes as she admits, “It turns out I’m my worst enemy/Don’t know how to be a friend to me/Don’t think I’ll ever change, yeah/A breakdown is my daily routine/A fake smile is my accessory.” Yet, as Ariana Grande said, “Fuck a fake smile.” That Rexha continues to remark upon her self-sabotaging and self-hating ways is the first step to recovery. And it’s all very “cute” to talk about in one’s twenties, but, as Lana Del Rey might have found out, that which works in one’s youth might not as time goes on and people expect more from you.
The second to last song, “Amore” featuring Rick Ross, obviously riffs off the classic “Italian” number, “That’s Amore”—popularized by Dean Martin. Here, Rexha gives it her own “Material Girl” meets “7 Rings” spin as she details how all the finer things are what truly amount to “amore” in the modern age—which no, isn’t really a super great message if we’re ever going to really change tack on fucking up the environment. But we all know that’s a phony baloney pursuit, which is why Elon Musk is forming an outer space colony. But it’s unlikely that, on Mars, Rexha will still be able to croon with conviction, “When you wake in a dream/Wrapped in Versace sheets, that’s amore/When you rip off his clothes/In his all black Lusso, that’s amore/When the light hits your eyes/‘Cause that eight karat shines, that’s amore/When he spends his money on ya/Fly to Positano anytime you wanna, that’s amore.”
The finale is “Mama,” which continues Rexha’s “interpolation steez” with “Bohemian Rhapsody” incorporated as she sings, “Mama told me to look to heaven/‘It’s a dark, dark world, it’s a dangerous place for a girl like you’/But mama, I don’t belong to heaven/‘Cause I’ve sold my soul a long time ago, just like you.” While it might sound kind of cunty, it’s actually a beautiful love song to an imperfect mother—for all mothers are (don’t let June Cleaver tell you any differently). Rexha explained, “My mom had me when she was really young. She was about seventeen. And I think that when I was growing up, she was growing up with me… And I think with that song, I was like, ‘Listen, you’ve done the best you could. And I’m a little fucked up, but so are you. You know, like, we all are.'”
In this way, Better Mistakes’ release on the weekend of Mother’s Day seems highly tailored. And, maybe, if Rexha ever took the ill-advised plunge on having children, she herself could make better parenting mistakes with them as well. Though it’s hard to top spawning someone who ends up famous. Or, depending who you ask, maybe that’s the worst mistake of all that a parent can make.
