They say “good things take time” but, apparently, that’s not always true. At least in the case of Reneé Rapp and Megan thee Stallion’s “Mean Girls” song “Not My Fault,” it only took one day to come up with a banger that fans immediately fell in love with.
The new song, written by Rapp, was created specifically for the newest version of “Mean Girls,” which is in theaters now. And, though the film is an adaptation of the musical, “Not My Fault” isn’t sung as part of the story, but rather plays as the credits roll. It marks the first team-up between the two singers and, according to Rapp, it all came together remarkably fast.
“I had one day off on tour while I was in L.A., for the Oakland and then Los Angeles show, and honestly, I knew we needed an end credits [song],” Rapp explained to TheWrap. “And I really was just like, ‘Damn, I have one day off, we might as well just try.”
She continued, “Because if we don’t, then I’m not going to be able to think about anything the next month while I’m away, and I’ll be stressed because I will have to do it on the road, and I’d like to be in like a studio that I feel good in. So we just went in one day, me and a couple of my friends who I work with a lot, and it was just the first song that happened. It came and it ended up being like the one that we love.”
You can watch Rapp’s full breakdown of “Not My Fault” in the video above.
Of course, “Not My Fault” wasn’t the only song Rapp helped write for the film. She also penned “What Ifs,” a song sung by Cady Heron — played in this version of the film by Angourie Rice — at the start of the film, before she arrives at Northshore. Rapp wrote the latter roughly a year ago, and notes that it was certainly daunting for her.
“When we wrote that I was definitely a little like, ‘Holy s—, how do I write something that’s not for myself?’ I’d never done it,” Rapp recalled. “Let alone how do I write something like hypothetical, right? Obviously, this isn’t in a story, but that opening sort of thing sets the tone for the rest of the movie. So it needs to be good. And it also needs to explain what’s going on. And that, to me, was really important.”
In the end, the key to unlocking both songs was just figuring out the perspectives.
“When I write for myself, it’s coming based off of my own experience, right? When I write for ‘What Ifs’ or something like that, it’s narrative from somebody else’s perspective,” she explained further. “But then with ‘Not my fault,’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m kind of writing this for the movie, but also, I’m just trying to write a banger.’”
You can watch TheWrap’s full interview with Reneé Rapp here.
