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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2020 7:58:31 GMT -5
Before you post something arbitrary or something that is pretty much common knowledge, let's dive deeper into Bebe Rexha's decade-long career to see what went RIGHT and what went WRONG.
Arguably one of the most eclectic singer-songwriters of the decade, Bebe began writing songs for the likes of Rihanna, Selena Gomez, and Tinashe. From 2010 until 2012, Bebe joined Pete Wentz's experimental "Black Cards" band. "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" was Bebe's first solo release featuring rock-inspired tracks like "Can't Stop Drinking About You" and the now-viral "I'm Gonna Show You Crazy".
One of the most upsetting moments in Bebe's career involves the crediting of her involvement in "Hey Mama", the smash single with David Guetta, Nicki Minaj, and Afrojack that reached #8 on the Hot 100. Despite the entire hook being sung by Bebe, she received only credit as a songwriter. Eventually, she was given credit as a featured artist, but it was too little... too late.
In 2015, Bebe co-wrote and was featured on G-Eazy's smash "Me, Myself & I" which reached #7 on the Hot 100 in 2016. Whether or not it was Bebe's "big break", it's indisputable that this track opened many doors for Bebe's career, and G-Eazy's too. Since its release, it was revealed that Bebe had originally wrote the song for herself, but brought it to G-Eazy who ended up featuring her.
Another hit for Bebe, Martin Garrix's EDM-infused "In The Name of Love" peaked at #24 and became a radio and streaming monster in 2016. Despite this series of back-to-back hits, Bebe's "No Broken Hearts" featuring Nicki Minaj failed to enter the Hot 100 and is forgotten in both artists' catalogs.
Even in 2017, Bebe had no studio album out. The "All Your Fault" series was intended to be her first album, but was changed to a mutli-EP project last minute. These projects spawned two massive singles for Bebe; "I Got You" that peaked at #43... and Meant to Be.
The diamond-certified single "Meant To Be" reached #2 on the Hot 100 and stayed there for 3 weeks, behind only Drake's two smash releases. The song spent a full year on the chart, has almost one billion Spotify streams, and was a crossover hit on radio. In the country format, it stayed at #1 for FIFTY weeks. "Meant To Be" is one of the most nominated songs in recent history, receiving Grammy, Billboard, American Music, VMA, EMA, Country Music Association, and CMA noms. Since its release, it has been named the biggest country song of the DECADE, and one of the biggest country songs EVER.
It seemed like Bebe's career was on a high as she was stacking up hits left and right. In 2018, her debut album "Expectations" debuted at #13 on the Billboard Albums Chart and spawned another hit, "I'm a Mess" which reached #35. Bebe went on to release a number of tracks with J Balvin, Jax Jones, The Chainsmokers, all seeing moderate success.
2020 has been a rather chaotic year for all of us, Bebe Rexha included. Her first and only release this year was "Baby I'm Jealous" featuring hot rapper Doja Cat. It had a strong opening-week but has since fallen flat in every metric and sees no chance at reviving itself. In such a SHORT time, Bebe went from being one of the most reliable HIT-MAKERS to.... nothing.
What went wrong in Bebe's career, recent or not? Is there anything that she can do to revive herself in this music industry? Is so, what? Should she go back to songwriting, change her genre, release more collaborations, or even... give up?
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Post by MoD on Dec 15, 2020 8:08:17 GMT -5
her music went wrong
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Post by Sambalada on Dec 15, 2020 8:11:03 GMT -5
I am unstanning Bebe Rexha It's an embarrassment that I even did. 10 years in the music industry and one "album", a million meaningless EDM filler features, and her recent single is the definition of trash.
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Post by Private Dancer on Dec 15, 2020 8:11:30 GMT -5
That's the industry today, streaming has messed everything up where you can be here and gone. I think she can make it, she just needs the right song.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2020 8:13:05 GMT -5
That's the industry today, streaming has messed everything up where you can be here and gone. I think she can make it, she just needs the right song. 100% agree! I think that if Bebe had found a sound that worked for her and a BETTER TEAM, she would be a main pop girl. She can sing (kinda...), write, and dance to an extent. But she's always been lacking identity.
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Post by Trilogy on Dec 15, 2020 8:25:24 GMT -5
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Post by fearlessarrow on Dec 15, 2020 8:31:48 GMT -5
For me it's her identity as an artist. She just doesn't have one - she could be replaced with any other pop artist and I wouldn't know it. For instance if you take successful pop artists, they have some sort of artist identity whether it be their image as a celebrity or through their music. And EDM features can only help so much with that.
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GP
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Post by GP on Dec 15, 2020 8:33:11 GMT -5
idk what went wrong but maybe it has to do with the fact that most won't even bother reading that :/
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Post by Dammn Baby on Dec 15, 2020 8:34:32 GMT -5
She's this decade's Bonnie McKee.
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Post by Devil Marlena Nylund on Dec 15, 2020 8:41:28 GMT -5
I first heard a couple of her singles in 2014 and I quite liked them. They were like alt-pop, a little left of pop music, more interesting. And I liked her voice. But everything since has just been generic with no distinctive personality and while Meant to Be was a big hit, it didn’t play into who she was as an artist and I feel like would have alienated those who were interested in her - and since she didn’t stick with country or was a country artist anyway, she wouldn’t exactly make new fans. It’s the complete lack of direction or distinctiveness in her sound.
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Post by Private Dancer on Dec 15, 2020 8:54:40 GMT -5
I kn[w she is going to get another hit, its Bebe Rexha. She has her off and on moments but she will be back. She has the voice that can fit in with any Top 40 trend today, and she can do a collaboration and still be successful. Most of the collabs she has done are only successful cause of her voice on the track.
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Soundcl🕤ck
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Post by Soundcl🕤ck on Dec 15, 2020 9:20:35 GMT -5
-no personality, she just doesn't have HER SOUND. Also, It's totally fine to experiment, but do it properly (like Gaga or Taylor).
-she knows how to make a hook, maybe she should stick to songwriting, producing or whatever for other singers, idk. I just know it's not meant to be for her, to be a big artist.
I think she's a female Charlie Puth of the 2010s...the only difference is that you can recognize Puth's sound/style.
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Post by Devil Marlena Nylund on Dec 15, 2020 10:36:26 GMT -5
Not unrelated but I think Ellie Goulding sort of had the same issue, except hers is more tragic because she had established a sound and had a direction.
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gabe
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Post by gabe on Dec 15, 2020 10:45:27 GMT -5
People don't care about her as an artist, they only care about the songs she happens to be featured on
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dremolus - solarpunk
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Post by dremolus - solarpunk on Dec 15, 2020 10:53:00 GMT -5
Bebe who? That girl who said she's jealous? Yeah, we don't really need her in the mainstream pop scene. There's way more interesting pop artists
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Post by dremolus - solarpunk on Dec 15, 2020 10:54:57 GMT -5
Not unrelated but I think Ellie Goulding sort of had the same issue, except hers is more tragic because she had established a sound and had a direction. I think On My Mind was a career killer, especially in comparison to Don't. And then after that, she just seemed to have an identity crisis
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Post by Enigma. on Dec 15, 2020 13:20:43 GMT -5
It's all about the label chasing the hit - labels are so obsessed with megagiga successful tracks that if an artist has like ten moderately successful tracks, it all pales in comparison and he/she/they is/are useless and not worth investing.
Maybe she should take a break, do some songwriting and come back with right people and perhaps indie?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 16, 2020 19:32:30 GMT -5
It's all about the label chasing the hit - labels are so obsessed with megagiga successful tracks that if an artist has like ten moderately successful tracks, it all pales in comparison and he/she/they is/are useless and not worth investing. Maybe she should take a break, do some songwriting and come back with right people and perhaps indie? Agree. Bebe should release her album in 2021, then forget about it because we already know it's not going to click. She needs to then take a break until the summer and team up with Max Martin/Jack Antanoff/Ian Kirkpatrick, producers who can help her ease back into her strongest genre; pop-rock.
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Post by dremolus - solarpunk on Dec 17, 2020 3:22:33 GMT -5
When did she release pop rock?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 17, 2020 7:59:15 GMT -5
When did she release pop rock? With her debut EP "I Don't Wanna Grow Up". And on her album "Expectations", songs like "Ferrari" & "I'm A Mess" with rock influences are arguably the stand out tracks. Her droplet "Last Hurrah" too sounded like pop-rock & it might be her best solo release ever (imo).
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Post by Koochie on Dec 17, 2020 10:36:31 GMT -5
That's a big part of it, because it also ties so heavily into her brand. She never connected with the right producers or the right sound, and her voice doesn't flatter the songs she wanted to sing. She's also all over the damn place. That prevented her from being marketable at all, so it makes sense why her entire trajectory was the mess the OP outlines it was. When you say "Bebe Rexha," my head goes completely blank. I know who she is, I've heard the name, but I know nothing about her other than she's a feature queen people call when the artist they actually wanted ghosts them. Everything in the OP checks out and I'm like "yeah, I remember that," but not in a way that I could have just pulled that knowledge out of my ass if you had asked me on the fly. Artists like Adele, Ariana, Dua Lipa, Sam Smith, etc. all have identities and brands that they rely on to market themselves and pull focus. Bebe doesn't, although you could argue she never had the opportunity to cultivate one. This, again, is probably the fault of poor networking. Someone said she was the Bonnie McKee of her time, but I think she's more like Charli XCX if she never moved on from Sucker. I don't recall Bonnie every making it out of a writer's camp, literally nobody knows who that is, but at least a handful of people know about Charli and Bebe. The problem with comparing her to Charli, though, is that Charli was savvy enough to realize her window of opportunity in the pop market wasn't big enough to take the risk, so she leaned more into the alt-pop/PC sound to get a different kind of notoriety and clout. She's not getting streaming numbers, but she's still making bank on that brand. Tinashe is trying to do this too, and it's sort of working out for her, but her problem is the sounds she wants to explore haven't really found a significant enough audience to carry her into anything meaningful yet. But then there's Bebe... she didn't really do that. She kept trying to force herself into the pop star box and, god bless her work ethic, she really tried, but it just wasn't going to happen for her. She couldn't settle on a sound, couldn't settle on a producer/producers, couldn't get her foot in the door long enough to pitch an idea, or get someone managing her who knew how to "create" an idea for Bebe Rexha.
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Post by Disco🌶️📖 on Dec 17, 2020 16:18:07 GMT -5
I don’t think she has a clearly defined identity or brand. I get trying to do lots of different styles of songs to diversify or hope that something would stick eventually.
As much as I have liked some of her songs, I think she excels more as a songwriter for other artists.
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Post by Choco on Jan 9, 2021 12:33:52 GMT -5
She will literally do any song she's asked to. There's no brand, no artistry, no identity. Is she pop/rock (her ealier material), is she a chorus girl for rappers (co-wrote "The Monster", "Me, Myself and I"), is she EDM ("I Got You, countless features), is she country? ("Meant to be"-ish). I've heard over a dozen songs and I still don't know who she is.
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Post by lazer on Jan 11, 2021 13:28:25 GMT -5
She has no identity whatsoever. She just accepts whatever song she has given without proper thought.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2021 13:31:37 GMT -5
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Post by #brayden on Jan 11, 2021 20:14:05 GMT -5
Lol @ "she has no identity" yet everyone commenting on her here knows who she is and has an opinion.
The problem is that she hasn't been able to make enough people care over the course of several years and songs - successful or not.
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Post by Sambalada on Jan 11, 2021 22:06:02 GMT -5
Lol @ "she has no identity" yet everyone commenting on her here knows who she is and has an opinion. The answer is this: When you say "Bebe Rexha," my head goes completely blank. I know who she is, I've heard the name, but I know nothing about her other than she's a feature queen people call when the artist they actually wanted ghosts them.
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Post by #brayden on Jan 11, 2021 22:28:34 GMT -5
Lol @ "she has no identity" yet everyone commenting on her here knows who she is and has an opinion. The answer is this: When you say "Bebe Rexha," my head goes completely blank. I know who she is, I've heard the name, but I know nothing about her other than she's a feature queen people call when the artist they actually wanted ghosts them. ... no. And I'm pretty sure anyone who's mind actually went "completely blank" wouldn't have four paragraphs or even anything further to comment on.
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Music Fan
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Post by Music Fan on Jan 11, 2021 22:41:20 GMT -5
Bebe Rexha has managed get her name out there enough so that she's someone that the general public knows of, particularly thanks to massive hits ("Meant to Be" and "Me, Myself and I"), but she was never an artist that the general public really wanted to follow or were anxiously waiting for another song from.
She has a decent voice and makes decent music, but I don't think she necessarily has something that distinguishes her from the pack. I do think this goes to what others have said about her lack of "identity." If someone asked me, what music does Bebe make, I'm not sure I'd know how to answer - sure, I'd say pop but that's just extremely generic and not wholly accurate.
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dremolus - solarpunk
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Post by dremolus - solarpunk on Jan 12, 2021 1:52:50 GMT -5
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