Album Review: Addison by Addison Rae

After a lukewarm reception to her 2023 debut EP, AR, it wasn't initially clear who the Louisiana native was as an artist. There were glimmers of pop girl energy, but ultimately, the four-track effort felt underdone and didn't make a big enough splash to set her apart. Following a striking collaboration with Charli XCX on Brat and it's completely different but also still brat's "Von Dutch" remix, Rae returned with her first major label single, "Diet Pepsi," in summer 2024, which was a pleasant surprise.

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music is wow A year on from release, Charli XCX's brat remains the greatest pop album of the decade. If not in quality, certainly in impact: its blunt, terse proclamations were boiled out of decade-plus long simmer of someone experiencing heartbreak, loss, stagnation, and failure; so when the "Boom Clap" girl wondered aloud why she wants to buy a gun and shoot herself or contemplate going off her birth control before threateningly asking to do more lines of coke, there was an awful lot to unpack and the stakes felt lived in. Still, while the thematic resonance was powerful and the secret sauce to its stratospheric heights, it was all secondary to the fact that every song fell into a neat binary of being a banger or tearjerker off aesthetics alone.

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"Obsessed" is merely a distant memory. The current Addison loves it still, but said she's found her integrative musical ground, that is, the 90s and 00s dance-pop scenes. You'll hear Mandy Moore's self-titled on "Times Like These"; Britney Spears's Blackout on "Fame Is a Gun"; Madonna's Bedtime Stories on "Headphones On" or Ray of Light on "Aquamarine" and "Times Like These".

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Many questions about Addison Rae lingered in my mind as I listened to the singles that preceded her debut album, Addison (2025). “Diet Pepsi” and “Aquamarine” are so charming, so artistic. Is it weird to be weirded out by an artist releasing something that feels like art? Was this always there? Could Rae have always been this kind of pop star? Did she grow into it, or was this the plan all along, even back when we first met her as a TikTok content creator? Sure, new-generation artists like Sabrina Carpenter and Tate McRae pull streaming numbers that prove English-language pop is still alive and well, and Taylor Swift remains the millennial pop queen who successfully bridged eras, proving herself to be a pop giant from the golden age of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Katy Perry, and more.

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Reinvention is an unusual concept to apply to someone at the beginning of their career. Transformation usually follows a clear introduction — a breakout role, a first book, a memorable performance. But in the case of Addison Rae, the idea of a "rebrand" defined her artistic breakthrough from the very beginning.

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In just one year, Addison Rae has invented herself. Once a ditzy TikTok star dancing for Jimmy Fallon and shaking hands with President Trump, she's joined the it-girl posse of Charli xcx and Lorde, and gained new influences in Lana Del Rey, Madonna, and Björk. Her star-making string of single releases (along with their often artsy and self-serious videos) reintroduced her as an astute chronicler of pop, a fun girl who wears her influences on her sleeve and can make a damn good song while she's at it.

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Addison Rae's debut album, Addison, is the hard-won culmination of the TikTok star's lengthy and public-facing reinvention. It's a slinky and scintillating album, poised between self-mythology and self-discovery: "Tell me who I am," she sings in the opening seconds of "Fame Is a Gun"--at once a challenge and a plea. Throughout Addison's fleet 33 minutes of breathy, sparkling, unapologetic pop, Rae makes roundabout moves to tell us who she is.

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