“So stop giving me your toxic positivity,” sings Bebe Rexha on her fourth studio album, Dirty Blonde. “You know you’re only making it worse.” The record marks her first release as an independent artist after parting ways with Warner last year, her label of over a decade. Since the release of her last LP, Bebe Rexha has been vocal on social media about having been mismanaged and mistreated by the American music industry. She said that she had been “silenced and punished” and wasn’t given an adequate promotional budget for what would become her final release on Warner, the standalone single “I’m the Drama”, written about her experiences.
As Dirty Blonde’s lead single “New Religion” claimed the top spot on the Billboard Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart a month ago, Rexha took to Instagram to share a vulnerable video she’d taken of herself at the beginning of 2025 when she found out that she had been dropped by Warner after 12 years, tearfully declaring she didn’t know where to go from there.
While Rexha’s penchant for dance-pop hooks and confessional lyrics about her mental health have indeed always gone underappreciated, the spirit in which the singer began to promote her latest studio album implied a Bebe Rexha who was free from constraints, from being molded by a mainstream record label into a marketable pop singer. Dirty Blonde, however, is a collection of EDM and dance songs that promote a version of Rexha that has always seemed to sell best, rather than something honest, authentic, or free.
There shouldn’t be any surprise when a dance-pop singer crafts an album whose primary purpose is to dance your cares away. Still, Rexha’s strongest talent has always been her vulnerability, setting her apart from other pop singers of her generation and, perhaps, keeping her from the top of pop charts that her music so obviously craves. The singer who released a track titled “I’m Gonna Show You Crazy” as one of her first singles has been a pop rulebreaker from the start.
Dirty Blonde, in contrast, plays it far too safe. Bebe Rexha was spreading her wings and experimenting with new influences, even collaborating with Dolly Parton on a country track. Rather than continue showcasing her versatile musical abilities since going independent, the singer has decided to return to the dance-oriented lane that has historically granted her the most commercial success, and the result lacks cohesion.
“New Religion” certainly performs well as a thesis statement for a new era for Rexha, and “I Like You Better Than Me” is the singer at her best, catchy and exposed. However, she spends the rest of Dirty Blonde overperforming in search of her next hit, recycling tired EDM production reminiscent of the mid-2010s.
While there is often power in flipping the bird at the constraints of mainstream music culture while signed to a major record label, such singers are often only successful when those labels are willing to back their artists regardless of chart performance. If personal statements and evidence are to be believed, Rexha never received such support, despite releasing a string of pop records that both adhered to and rejected sonic trends. It’s all the more jarring for the singer, no longer dependent on a major record label, to release an LP of what sounds more like a full-length rehash of her 2017 EP All Your Fault instead of a body of work that advocates for the most persuasive version of Rexha.
In a clear bid to replicate the large success the singer found with her previous David Guetta collaboration “I’m Good (Blue)”, which reached number one in over 20 countries, Dirty Blonde closes with a Rexha and Guetta reunion in the form of “Sad Girls”, a track that pleases as much as it disappoints. Where Guetta’s reign as a certified hitmaker in the pop music sphere ended somewhere around 2018, Rexha holds true to his waning sense of power. “I’m gonna dance, dance, dance with tears in my eyes,” she sings. “And I can’t stand watching you takin’ her home / But sad girls don’t leave ’til the last song.”
The song deserves recognition, if only for its prominent display of Rexha’s clear strength in earworms and for marrying pain with joy, two things that, for her, don’t exist without the other. Unfortunately, pop music moves fast, and even Dirty Blonde’s elevated BPM can’t keep up.