Who is Addison Rae, former Tiktok star who resurfaced as the new little princess of pop

A few years ago, when Addison Rae went to claim a contract with Columbia Records, the pop star was not guaranteed. She was better known as one of Tiktok’s revelation stars, someone who had used the app to catapult from anonymity to ubiquity, but as a dancer and personality – not as a musician. And some initial demo recordings she didn’t like had recently leaked online, and she wanted to distance herself from them.

Then, instead of presenting a set of sound ideas, she entered the meeting with a mood panel in a folder.

First came the descriptors: words like “intentional”, “intense”, “tall”, “dance”, “brightness”. Then came the colors: water-water, pink shock, purple, yellow. And then the screenshots of remarkable moments of super -superlas shows: Britney Spears with “I’m Slave 4 U” at 2001 MTV Video Music Awards, the “The Girlie Show” tour of Madonna, and so on.

It worked – she got the contract. But what came next was a puzzle, Rae said in an interview last month at Popcast, The New York Times music podcast: “I thought, I know what I want people to feel when they hear my music, but how does it sound? And what’s going to say?”

These questions put RAE on a mission of over a year to refine its public image, forged in the relentless algorithmic fires of Tiktok and which has recently seen it transformed into a perspective beginner of pop. This week, she will release “Addison”, her debut album and one of the most important pop releases of the year. It is a panting, sweaty and urgent album – a return to the sounds three decades ago than a conversation with the contemporary pop.

This is because the conductive wire in “addison” is not exactly the genre. Music is mainly accelerated, but in a controlled and cool way, and production has frequent small interruptions, places where music change intensity and textures.

Rae’s vocals are sweet and foggy, as if sung from the outer edge of a dream, but their lyrics often talk about the body, about their bodily presence – a reminder that their career has always been rooted in the physical. And the songs are full of overlapping harmonies, creating a warm warmth of eterity.

But perhaps more significant are the music videos, which are impregnated with the opulence of femininity – flexing dances and references to vintage glamor, body jewelry and melancholy on the beach, expensive dresses and the temptations of illicit substances. In Rae’s songs, there are echoes by Lana Del Rey, as well as Madonna, but the character she has been developing over the past year is not entirely dependent on any of her influences.

What seemed to be Addison Rae’s “cool washing” was actually a kind of change of an older identity. Rae, 24, was born Addison Rae Easterling and grew up in Louisiana, where he participated in dance competitions since he was a young man. She started posting at Tiktok at the end of high school. Quickly, he began to treat this as a job, sometimes sharing up to eight videos a day, relentlessly focusing on dances and songs that were pumping.

“When I reflect on that time,” she said, “I recognize how much choice and like are a luxury.”

“I was definitely strategic with that,” he added. “It was a lot about ‘how am I going to just get out of here?’ It wasn’t about ‘let me show the details of myself now’. ” Following his own taste, whatever it was, was not an option (“a sacrifice that had to be made,” she said).

Addison promptly recognized how this may seem to skeptics who freeze her in the amber of her past, or who find the radiant exuberance of her rise in the misaligned Tiktok with the carnality of her current work. Bright memories do not easily fade: “That’s why I think it comes up now, people feeling, ‘Ah, is that inactic. Have you ever enjoyed making music? Or have you sung? You’ve been something more than just a Tiktok dancer?'”

She was, but she can show it now. Cavied hair, red lip, she wore a jeans on bright pantyhose, pink polains on black louboutins. And he spoke with the comfort of someone who had the opportunity to evaluate his own decisions, as well as those that others tried to impose on her.

Six years ago, when he began to attract attention to Tiktok, Rae glimpsed how the music industry was keeping an eye on the app and its stars; At first, labels representatives sent him $ 20 (about $ 110) via Paypal in exchange for dance videos with songs from his artists. Eventually, she became part of the first wave of app superstars, and tilting into the whims of the algorithm ended up earning her 88 million followers.

Among his colleagues, Rae was the one who fell the most standing, perhaps the only one really understanding the success in the app as a funnel for attention, not as a reflection of a specific skill set. Outside the phone screen, she starred in a Netflix movie (“He’s Too Much” of 2021); had a podcast and a makeup line; And he was recently filming “Animal Friends”, a movie with Aubrey Plaza and Ryan Reynolds, scheduled for this year.

Already in 2020, however, Rae was writing and recording music. “Practically from the beginning, I said, ‘I don’t just want to record, I want to write,'” she said. “So, at least I know what I’m doing, or I can connect with the things I’m singing. Especially because I was too young.”

In 2021, she released her first single, “Obsessed” – “Perfectly pulsating, concise and pleasant Pelotonchore,” said the New York Times – which caused a small excitement but then lost strength. “In fact, I think one day ‘Obsessed’ will have its moment ‘Stars are Blind’,” she said, referring to Paris Hilton’s single, once ridiculed and now embraced.

Despite the negative feedback, she kept writing. “I didn’t let it affect me so much,” she said. “I didn’t stop writing it was like I was saying, ‘Okay, well, I’ll show you.'”

The following year, many of their leaked recordings – “practically we gave the first day” – they hit the internet. For Rae, it was frustrating, but also free market research. Fans chose their favorites – “In fact, I’ve seen people doing CDs,” Rae said – and Charli XCX contacted to contribute to a verse in one of them, “2 Die 4”.

The leaks turned Rae from an aspirant to a hard -working pop diva into a cult favorite. “People said, ‘Wait, why do I kindly like it?'” She said almost shyly. Eventually, Rae released independently an EP, “AR”, bringing together some of these songs.

Rae met the Swedish composers and producers Elvira Andjärd and Luka Kloser, who are part of the editorial camp of the powerful Hitmaker Max Martin last year after signing her contract with the label. On the first day they worked together, they created the chorus of what would become “Diet Pepsi”.

“My biggest goal is to never feel that I am referenced a specific song or artist,” she said, noting that a climate can be created by the simple use of a family sound instrument that evokes an era in the early 1990s. “We use an M1 in many of the songs,” she said, referring to the Korg instrument, “and that was something very popular used in many of those great songs I love.”

But when pressured to describe what the pure pop icons she admires – Mormanna, Gaga, Britney, Prince, Janet – have in common, their answer was “commitment.” Which means – compromise with a sound, commitment to a style, commitment to a fully incorporated presentation.

His taste buds also earned him the respect of some of his veterans: Lord praised her, Del Rey posted a video listening to “Diet Pepsi” and Charli XCX invited her to appear on a remix, which included a wild scream of Rae, one of last year’s definite pop sounds.

But instead of seeming that Rae is extracting credibility from his veterans, they are the most established stars that are approaching her to bathe in the shine of his aura.