The first time I heard ‘Rich and Famous’, I was on my kitchen floor, hair still wet from a too-hot shower, drinking cheap prosecco out of a chipped mug because I didn’t have a clean glass. My phone was buried under a pile of unopened bills, the kind of pile you pretend isn’t there until it starts to look like modern art. I dug it out and hit play on one of the tracks in my review inbox, and Veera Rebekka’s voice slipped in like someone who already knew my mess—soft at first, then sharp, threading through my head with “I’ve got mail I choose to ignore ’cause there’s a sale in my favourite store.” It was an oh-shit moment, the kind where you stop mid-sip because the song starts narrating your bank statement.
The beat has that moody, late-night glow, the kind that belongs under bathroom club lights or in an Uber you definitely can’t afford, booking another flight on your phone just because payday hit. It’s upbeat dance music that favors funk over the house sound so popular in clubs now—groovier, warmer, more human in its pull. Veera stacks her verses like receipts: “Got bad credit everything’s maxed out / I know I shouldn’t get it my bank’s in doubt.” She’s definitely talking about the mid-waist leather jacket I’ve shoplifted in my mind at least a dozen times. It’s dark pop with a sly wink, confession as seduction. Every hook lands with a mix of shame and thrill—“I’m trying to live like the rich and the famous / I’ll never own mansions but the mindset’s contagious.” That’s the drunk logic we’ve all used, the I-deserve-this spiral that feels delicious until the morning.
Her voice has that Scandinavian frost, edged with something dangerous. You can tell she’s a writer because every lyric is a small act of storytelling: splurging on tattoos you can’t afford, trading stability for a new high. I know that high—walking out of a store with a dress that costs more than my rent, telling myself it’s “an investment piece” while my stomach twists. She’s one of us, though, tracking her monthly budget with iPhone notes and Google Sheets. “Money is such a problem, it’s a taboo or so I’m told,” she sings, and you can imagine her shrugging when she delivers that line, as if the surrender to habits that have their own gravitational pull is inevitable.
What gets me is the mix of humor and vulnerability. She’s fully aware she’s in over her head—“I’ll only own a castle if it’s built in the air”—but she makes it sound almost worth it. But money, or the lack of it, isn’t her only focus. She wants to feel something other than tired, to build a life that looks better lit than lived. And in that way, it’s not just relatable—it’s dangerously seductive. Like the first drink after you’ve sworn you’re not drinking this week. Like the text you send to someone you shouldn’t, knowing damn well they’ll answer and you’ll end up under him, or her, that night.
Some might see Rich and Famous as a warning, but Lorde did that early on already, when she told us we’d never be Royals. This is a confession booth with a bassline, actually, a reminder that self-control is overrated when the beat’s this good and you look too hot in those designer clothes you can’t afford. Call it millennial financial angst in an economic environment never meant for us to thrive in, but Veera Rebekka doesn’t just sing it—she lives it in real time with us. She pulls you into the spending spree until you’re swiping your card without thinking.
