Listening to Addison Rae’s self-titled debut feels like wearing your gaudiest dress and stepping into the Chateau Marmont on a hot summer day. There are glistening turquoise pools, loads of cigarettes, diamond jewelry, and everything is doused in the golden Los Angeles sun. At the center of the glamour stands Rae in stilettos. She’s a self-assured, cheeky girl-next-door shedding her past and stepping into this new chapter with her unique ability to set a distinct vibe.
For Rae, it’s incredibly important to build this world. After all, unlike most musicians making a debut record, the former TikTok sensation is out to do more than just make a name for herself. Rae’s public persona already exists: She’s the fifth most-followed person on TikTok, known for her vivacious online personality. But the platform she built back in 2019 as a Louisiana teen who moved to L.A. and became all about content creators, online dance trends, beauty brand deals, and torrid love triangles doesn’t apply to her self-titled debut. Instead, Addison is a reintroduction, a portrait of the young woman Rae has grown into, one who is free to take her artistry wherever she pleases.
Rae first took a swing at music back in 2021 with her debut single, “Obsessed.” After the ultra-packaged dance-pop track was panned by critics, the aspiring singer went back to the drawing board to rethink her craft. Her 2023 EP AR, which included the Charli XCX-assisted “2 Die 4,” showed more potential with alternative-pop leanings and a hazy center. Since then, Rae has been vocal about taking her music seriously and sharpening her instincts. For her debut LP, Rae notably kept the production team small with two female producers, Luka Kloser and Elvira Anderfjärd.
On Addison, Rae’s eclectic intentions are loud and clear: to create a distinctive, dreamy soundscape that brings her album moodboards to life — and, naturally, make fun music for people to dance to. The album opener, “New York,” throws listeners into Rae’s world with a club-ready nod to her most beloved collaborator and influence, Charli XCX. “I’m a dance whore,” Rae proclaims before a pulsating Jersey club beat takes over the song. “Money Is Everything” is just as fun with lively dance-pop energy punctuated by a slower trip-hop twist. The bubbly track celebrates Rae’s inspirations: “DJ play Madonna/Wanna roll one with Lana/Get high with Gaga,” she sings. It's quite a dream blunt rotation to conjure.
Lush synths drive Addison as Rae continues to lean into the sparkling sonics of her singles “Diet Pepsi” and “Aquamarine.” Those early previews are the strongest examples of the sound Rae has shaped here. The Lana Del Rey-inspired “Summer Forever” takes the same low-key melody as those singles and makes it moodier, with twinkling production that evokes a glinting afternoon car drive down Sunset Boulevard. Both the R&B-inflected “Times Like These” and “In the Rain” push the fantastical feel of the album incrementally further with bass lines that desperately want to boom even louder.
The most exciting sonic turn occurs on album highlight “Fame Is a Gun,” with a supercharged synth that moves in tantalizing directions and evoke Britney Spears’ In the Zone and Lady Gaga’s The Fame. She’s not the second coming of Spears, Gaga, Del Rey, or Madonna. Instead, Rae translates pieces of these icons’ music and filters them through the lens of the modern internet age.
Lyrically, Rae writes about “the glamorous life” you’d expect from an L.A.-based 24-year-old. “Diamonds are my best friend like I’m Norma Jean,” she sings on “Money Is Everything” before cackling, “I’m the richest girl in the world.” Honestly, why shouldn’t Rae brag about how much money she has? She became a self-made millionaire by the time she was 20. There’s a whole lot of California ease as Rae conjures sex and cigarettes, and sometimes both. She’s more believable telling us she’s “young, dumb, and cute” with “nothing to lose” during “In the Rain” than she is trying to trying to convince us, “I’m not an easy fuck/But when it comes to shoes I’ll be a slut” in “High Fashion.”
The album’s most interesting moments are the ones that try to reveal a sliver of the star’s more complex innermost thoughts, including some insecurities. On “Times Like These,” the former TikToker turned pop sensation admits that attention can be overwhelming. “My life moves faster than me,” she sings before asking: “Do I eat what I want tonight?/Or will it make me feel less tight.” Rae’s ever-present smile really falls away when she wonders if her parents' messy divorce will stop her from finding lasting love; it’s a subject she explores in multiple songs, including “Summer Forever,” “Headphones On” and “Times Like These.” There’s only a line or two in each track, but these insightful moments are a welcome reprieve from the sparkly hedonism. “Keeping a smile on my face for protection/Turning my tears into gold,” she sings on “In the Rain.” Such flashes of vulnerability offer a welcome backdrop to her unshakable optimism.
Addison isn’t the work of a fully formed pop technician on the level of her heroes. For a dance-pop record, some of the album gets bogged down by a lack of dynamism, with too much of the music feeling circular and repetitive rather than propulsive, almost like you’re floating along rather than being driven by a captivating rhythm. At worst, the LP’s dream-like quality starts becoming literally sleepy. The “Lost and Found” and “Life’s No Fun Through Clear Waters” interludes are vibey moments meant to pull us in with thoughtful-seeming lines like “I lost myself and found myself again,” but these passages feel like gauzy, emotional window dressing rather than being genuinely revealing. It doesn’t help that the singer’s vocal abilities can sometimes get muddied in production that buries her feathery falsetto. There's a sense at times that she can’t quite take the command that she wants.
It’s clear, even in this new version of herself, Rae hasn’t quite nailed the right balance of pop-star decadence and pop-star introspection. Maybe she’ll get it right on her next project. For now, as she sings on “Times Like These,” the foundation is set for her next phase: “Head out the window/Let’s see how far I’ll go.”
