Is Addison Rae the next Pop Superstar?

Graphic by Izzy Desmairas

By Lily Suckow Zeimer

When my friends first told me Addison Rae was making music, I groaned. I’ve seen He’s All That (2021), I’ve heard “Be Happy” by Dixie D’Amelio, and it’s been enough to convince me Tik Tok influencers should halt all forays into traditional forms of pop culture. I’ll admit, sometimes I’m quick to be a hater, and I fully expected to be one upon hearing any of Rae’s music.

When I was first introduced to Rae as a singer, she only had one song out. “Obsessed,” released back in March 2021, was met with backlash—Rae wasn’t viewed as a pop-girl and this change in her image felt jarring to some. Without the right audience, Rae’s lyrics sounded more narcissistic than campy. In a recent interview with Vogue, Rae shared that this experience almost deterred her from music entirely. Furthermore, many songs she had recorded were leaked, and she initially saw this as a career killing event.

But from here a niche fandom grew. People began listening to the leaked songs on YouTube. They were hard to track down, with views in the thousands, but a community of followers persisted. 

A week ago, my friend’s phone was hooked up to the car’s bluetooth and she played a song I’d never heard before. You could call it generic pop, but not in a demeaning way. The instrumental was new and interesting, but there was still a familiarity about it, and the lyrics were easily digestible without being boring. I love pop artists like Lady Gaga and Charli XCX, so my ears perked up. Within the first few seconds, I was bobbing my head and gave a passive “This is good.” My friend smiled, paused the song, and said matter of factly, “It’s Addison Rae.”

I was suddenly on board the Addison Rae train. I theorized with my friends—why wasn’t she releasing these if they were so good? I hadn’t heard any news regarding Rae for a couple years and assumed she was just fading into obscurity. Yet, I was convinced these songs could be her resurrection and change the minds of haters like me by bringing valuable content to the pop-music scene. In a strange twist of fate, and I am not making this up, Rae announced the release of her EP, AR, just days later.

AR consists of five songs: “I got it bad,” “2 die 4 (feat. Charli XCX),” “Nothing On (But The Radio),” “it could’ve been u,” and the previously released “Obsessed.” The first four songs had all been leaked. There have been changes and the addition of Charli XCX’s feature, but Rae has already built a fanbase upon these songs, one that will be happy to now be able to actually stream high quality versions of them. The fact that Rae was already sitting on more than an EP’s worth of content (my friends are still mad that “U Had it Coming” wasn’t released) is impressive. Clearly she didn’t just pick a song from a hat, record and release it. They’re all genuinely good, and I’ve listened to the EP all the way through multiple times. The songs are easy to dance and sing along to. Even the hated “Obsessed” is catchy. I laughed when I first heard the lyrics: “You say you're obsessed with me / So I took a second / And I said, ‘Me too’ / I'm obsessed with me as much as you.” 

The more you look into the EP, the more lore you find. “Nothing On (But The Radio)” was a leaked Lady Gaga demo beloved by fans. Rae picked it up and gave the song a new life, adding credibility to her new pop persona. Little details like this are what’s building Rae’s fanbase. Fans feel more connected to Rae through the leaks because it offered a stripped back version of her music, rather than songs that rely solely on marketing. Still, she notes that this EP is more of a release from the archives. Rae has eclectic music taste, and is not one to simply follow along with whatever the biggest producer says. Her public Spotify playlists have everything from Britney Spears to The Smiths. She wants to explore genres, and continue to learn about music, but released this EP as a “time capsule” for fans and the start of a new era in her career.  

So that’s how I was tricked into becoming a supporter of Addison Rae’s pop career. But I’m honestly grateful. I sometimes find myself so steeped in one group’s opinions of pop culture, it’s hard to accept any content I’ve already deemed not worth my time. I think a lot of people hate pop music just because it’s popular. Music is meant to help us express our emotions, and pop does this just as well as anything else. Just because you happen to be having fun listening to the same song as millions of others doesn’t mean you're any less of an individual. Even if you don’t usually identify with popular media, it feels nice to expand your horizons sometimes, to look at things without furrowing your eyebrows.