Why I’m Writing This

I’m a postgraduate student of literature. Which means I spend most of my days buried in theory: Kristeva on the abject, Barthes on authorship, Said on empire. But when the reading light dims and the JSTOR tabs close, I find myself scrolling through pop music forums and crying over old Sky Ferreira demos. This might sound like a contradiction. But to me, pop music is theory. It’s an archive of feeling, a register of our collective longing, anxiety, performance, and self-mythology.

So when Addison Rae released her debut album, Addison, on June 6, 2025, I didn’t approach it as a novelty. I approached it as a text. As a cultural object that deserves to be read, not dismissed.

Because something odd happened in the past two years: Addison Rae, a TikTok star once reduced to an algorithm and a punchline, became a really good pop artist.

The Album Review

It turns out that Addison Rae has a surprisingly arresting presence as a vocalist. Not because of her powerhouse vocals, though she’s improved since the Obsessed days, but because of something rarer: taste. She knows what to sing, when to hold back, when to whisper, and when to let the production speak for itself. This is a pop star who curates her sadness with intention.

The album is sonically cohesive thanks to producers like Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser, who lean into late-’90s and early-’00s textures: dreamy synth pads, R&B grooves, shimmering indie-pop flourishes, sultry trap beats, and no desperation to trend. The sound is stylish, but not try-hard. It’s nostalgic, but not derivative.

Girlhood as Aesthetic, Influence as Intention

From its first notes, Addison is drenched in reference: not as a crutch, but as a method. It’s less a diary than a mood board with a pulse. The opener, “New York”, is all bright synth stabs and Jersey club friction, but Rae’s breathy vocal resists the chaos. It's not trying to be loud; it’s trying to be seen. The Big Apple becomes less a location and more a symbol for reinvention; a trope of cinematic girlhood, she wears like couture.

“Diet Pepsi” is a thesis statement disguised as a pop song: Rae sings of artificial sweetness, desire, and detachment with a tone that flirts with irony but never commits to it. She performs consumption as an object and a subject, reminding me of the constructed femme voice in post-Lana pop.

“Money Is Everything” plays with cadence the way Britney once did, leaning into her Louisiana drawl and her obsession with image. It’s not a critique of capitalism; it’s a crystallisation of it. It’s Rae as a pop avatar, lip-syncing the values we scroll past daily. That she does so with such conviction is what makes it unnerving.

“Aquamarine” stands out as a haunted lullaby. The synths shimmer with an Enya-like delicacy, but the vulnerability here is far more contemporary: it's Lana by way of Tumblr, a dream-pop gaze flickering behind Instagram lashes. Rae doesn’t push for emotion. She lets it seep through the seams.

Then, the blink-and-you'll-miss-it “Lost & Found”. Barely a minute long, it functions like an overheard voicemail or a memory half-erased. It’s the emotional negative space between two fully realised tracks—strategically placed, not filler.

“High Fashion” is the album’s beating heart. Glitchy, sultry, and vaguely threatening, it’s Rae at her most Charli XCX-adjacent. But where Charli often leans into maximalism, Rae prefers precision. This track could’ve been a satire of influencer excess, but instead it becomes an elegy for it—think early James Blake through a Y2K lens.

“Summer Forever” evokes Lana Del Rey nostalgia and Enya’s ambient warmth, a strange and lovely hybrid that should feel clumsy but doesn’t. Rae knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s tapping into collective memory and reshaping it into something glittery and sad.

“In the Rain” is Rae’s most mature moment. There’s no build. No hook chasing virality. Just a steady unravelling of expectations: of love, of family, of self.

And then: “Fame Is a Gun.” Here lies the album’s manifesto. She asks, “Do I provoke you with my tone of innocence?” And I want to scream yes. Rae is dangerous on this track, not because she’s angry, but because she’s lucid. There’s something uncanny in how softly she sings about destruction, as if she’s reading a diagnosis she already knew.

“Times Like These” floats by like a trip-hop ghost similar to Janet Jackson. It doesn’t insist on its sadness; it simply wears it. She’s not pleading for empathy. She’s asking you to sit in ambiguity with her.

“Life’s No Fun Through Clear Waters” (another interlude) is formally experimental, conceptually potent. What’s fun about clarity? What is a pop album, if not a constructed murk we choose to drown in?

And finally, “Headphones On”. The closing track is cinematic, not in scale but in intimacy. This is Rae’s bedroom pop fantasy, a sigh into silence. She’s not asking to be known. She’s simply stating that solitude is survival. “Wish my mom and dad could’ve been in love,” she breathes. It's devastating in its casualness. She reminds that music is what she finds her solace in.

Final Thoughts

Addison Rae’s Addison is not a novelty. It’s a deeply stylised, self-aware, and emotionally coherent album. It doesn’t ask for critical seriousness; it assumes it. And that’s the most subversive move of all.

She’s not saying, “This is who I am.”

She’s saying, “This is what pop can be.”

And I believe her.

I’m tired of dismissing women making pop music as unserious or disposable. Because I’m fascinated by what happens when internet personas make the jump to albums. Because in a time where everyone is curating a brand, Addison Rae is trying earnestly to curate a voice. That matters. And as someone who studies stories, voices, masks, and meaning, I’m not about to ignore a record that’s trying to navigate all four at once.

It’s for the girls who write sad notes in their Notes app, the queers who miss Tumblr aesthetics, and the romantics who still believe a well-placed synth can heal you. It’s for those of us still figuring it out.

Just like Addison.

#PopMusic #Literature #AddisonRae #MusicTheory #EmotionalExpression #MusicReview