ADDISON RAE - Addison

Addison Rae, model, dancer, influencer and TikToker with 88 million followers on the Chinese platform, can certainly be mocked and dismissed as a minor pop phenomenon engineered to cash in on her social media fame, but her success can't be denied. Whether people like her for her "simple", "old-fashioned" female popstar aura – a bit like Sabrina Carpenter – or because she embodies the kind of success story many fellow Gen Zers (she was born in 2000) would love to replicate, the sheer curiosity surrounding her musical project is undeniable. That was true after the critical drubbing of her debut single "Obsessed" (2021), and it remained true following the success of the teenage love anthem "Diet Pepsi" last year. What should we expect from the debut album of a singer considered "frivolous" and inessential, whose audience largely comes from TikTok and social media? In theory, nothing, right? And yet her debut album, "Addison", is surprising, to say the least.

First of all, it has to be said that rather than a 2025 album, this sounds more like something from 2015, or 2017. That's because the light pop arrangements are all coated in a certain psychedelic gloss, built into soft, atmospheric tracks in which Rae's often ethereal vocals – very much in a Lana Del Rey vein – emerge delicate and inspired. Sure, she won't be crowned female vocalist of the year, but the formula works.

The airy musicality explored on Addison doesn't align with that of contemporaries like Kali Uchis, for instance, because this is still pop for everyone, unpretentious, and in almost every track it talks about love and youthful passion, with the odd scattered reflection on the double-edged nature of success and fame. But you can sense real studio work went into it, since the music has been thought through and gathered into a conceptual whole that, however vacuous in content, still comes across as pleasant and cohesive.

It's worth noting that much of the album was written by Swedish producer Elvira Anderfjärd, who has worked with The Weeknd, Tove Lo, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift. And indeed, traces of Swift's style can be felt in a few tracks, such as the closer "Headphones On". Others, meanwhile, are polished to the point of sounding almost like they could have been produced by Tame Impala, as in the case of "In The Rain".

At least three songs stand out in particular: "Aquamarine", a peculiar seapunk fantasy that harks back to the early 2010s with lysergic synth tones reminiscent of Empire Of The Sun; "High Fashion", a slightly hallucinated soft-pop number in the vein of Ariana Grande; and "Fame Is A Gun", a cadenced, sardonic track in which the pop superstar looks out at the hurricane of show business swirling around her, doing so from the eye of the storm.

The agitated opening number "New York" also works well – the only track that betrays any kind of "rock" edge more in line with current trends – as does the reflective "Times Like These", which muses on the "confusion" of today's world, though always from the privileged vantage point of a music star. Rae's work isn't, and probably never will be, sharp social commentary, but then again, who's looking for that when listening to her music anyway?

In short, even her detractors will be surprised to find in this album a surprisingly compelling debut, not least because it runs counter to the return to instrumental music seen in so much of today's pop – think of Lola Young's "Messy", Billie Eilish's "Birds Of A Feather", and so on – and in its dreamy, psychedelic spirit it seems aimed more at millennials than at Gen Z or Gen Alpha.

That said, Addison Rae has admitted that this will be the "first and last" album under her name (her full name being Addison Rae Easterling), hinting at either a stylistic shift toward other genres, perhaps under a new moniker, or the definitive end of the project. After all, the influencer has already made her film debut, and music doesn't seem to be the only path open to her. Either way, this album is, and will likely remain, a rare white blackbird in the 2025 pop landscape. If you don't believe it, give it a proper listen.

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25/06/2025