If we were to venture a guess back in the depths of COVID lockdowns, just what the future might hold for the first generation of TikTokers, few would have put their money on any of them becoming global-charting pop stars. As The Renegade dance craze reigned supreme and Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘Savage’ infiltrated every corner of the nascent app, it seemed unlikely that this democratisation of viral fame would ever truly convert to the currency of traditional superstardom.
Nearly five years later, the platform’s sparkly-eyed, all-American darling Addison Rae has managed to do exactly that, crossing the threshold from internet influencer to pop It Girl. With recent singles ‘Diet Pepsi’ and ‘Aquamarine’, and a feature on Charli XCX’s star-studded ‘Brat’ remix album, Rae has pulled off a relaunch of sorts that – following a wobbly entry into music back in 2021 – has shut down questions of whether the influencer-turned-singer might actually be cool, and instead left music fans and fellow artists insisting that she’s, well, kind of iconic right now.
After TikTok started to snowball in popularity in 2019 – the same year Addison Rae Easterling joined – the video-sharing app reached new heights as the pandemic redirected the globe’s attention deeper into our phones. The Louisiana- born teenager swiftly lip-synced and hip-popped her way to notoriety, and just one year later became the highest-earning star on the platform with 54 million followers (she now has 88.7 million).
She immediately possessed all the ingredients to achieve virality on the app – from her high school yearbook pearly whites and signature pouty girl expression to her trending music smarts and technical dance abilities that allowed her to master TikTok’s boxy repertoire. To this day, her most popular video is the viral ‘WAP’ dance to Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s 2020 NSFW hit.
It didn’t take long for Rae to capitalise on this vertiginous ascent, pivoting to music and dropping her debut single ‘Obsessed’ in 2021, an innocuous yet formulaic Selena Gomez-style self-love anthem produced by Benny Blanco. But the tepid response to the track almost completely turned her off music altogether. “I think I had a really fragile sense of self at that time,” she told Vogue. “I was 19, you know? It kind of crushed me for some time. I started feeling a lot of self-doubt, and those big dreams that I was pursuing, I just thought, ‘Maybe I’m not good enough to do this.’”
But the month after its release, Charli XCX praised the singer’s pop potential on X, writing: “She’s great. She comes with great lyric concepts. They all sound like [2016 EP] vroom vroom lyrics. It’s super cute. I think she’s a great popstar.” Charli clearly saw some of herself in the green up-and-comer, telling Vogue that Rae was like “no one I’d ever met really. Not jaded. Not faking. Not uncomfortable. Not trying to be anything other than herself”. There’s certainly something poetic about a long-grinding artist, who herself waited 15 years for the rest of the world to catch up to her greatness, seeing the spark in another budding pop star before it was in vogue.
Around the same time, Rae was making moves across other verticals, starring in Netflix’s He’s All That, featuring in a campaign for Kim Kardashian’s Skims’ shapewear brand (she’d also become besties with Kourtney Kardashian) and even taking a stab at launching her own beauty brand. But as is often the case with any rapid rise to fame, it made her especially prone to controversy. She faced criticism for performing viral dances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon without crediting the original Black creators, and her pandemic partying was indirectly called out by Ariana Grande, before she seemingly downplayed the virus further when she sported a clear handheld mask while meeting fans. Coming up in the TikTok creator Hype House, she was also an easy target to be labelled talentless, out of touch or downright cringe.
But her public image began to shift when Charli XCX crystallised her co-sign by working with Rae on 2023 EP ‘AR’ – songs that were originally leaked from her “lost album” the previous year – also featuring on the track ‘2 die 4’. It wasn’t exactly the pulse-racing, hair-flipping genius of ‘Brat’, but it boosted her cool girl credentials and secured a front row seat to Charli’s imperial phase the very next year. As ‘Brat’ went stratospheric this summer, Rae was honoured with being featured on the first remix with A.G. Cook. On the amped up version of ‘Von Dutch’, Rae makes her imprint with a piercing girly scream that scratches just the right part of your brain. As Charli’s life was changing forever, she took Rae by the hand to bring her along for the ride.
They debuted the track live in LA as the full cultural impact of ‘Brat’ was still being realised, and when Rae appeared onstage again in New York this September with Troye Sivan in tow, they sang her song, ‘Diet Pepsi’. The heady, warm haze of a pop track played up to Rae’s girlish innocence by showing off her sugary falsetto against the slow beat. The sultry yet playful music video made a bold statement too, helmed by independent film director Sean Price Williams, who’s known for his underground aesthetic.
LA YOU WERE FUNNN LAST NIGHHT pic.twitter.com/UILe7VWOxd
— Charli (@charli_xcx) June 16, 2024
.@charli_xcx brought @whoisaddison out at her Sweat Tour stop at Madison Square Garden – and came out with @troyesivan to sing Rae's single 'Diet Pepsi'#CharliXCX #AddisonRae #SweatTour #TroyeSivan #DietPepsi #BratSummer pic.twitter.com/vFEeJ2QKOY
— NME (@NME) September 24, 2024
Ahead of the single’s drop, her first since signing with Columbia Records, Rae’s social media underwent a drastic pivot. Whether it was a marketing stunt or a genuine brand of party girl impulsiveness, there was a clear osmosis of Charli’s DGAF-attitude. Fashion editorials and holiday snaps turned into topless photos with suggestive cans of Diet Pepsi covering her nipples and pictures of her smoking. Shifting to a blend of Lana Del Rey-esque black-and-white Americana and vintage Instagram core, Rae was clearly foreshadowing her reset.
And ‘Diet Pepsi’ wasn’t just a fluke. Linking up again with writer/producers Luka Kloser (Ariana Grande, Tate McRae) and Elvira Anderfjärd (Taylor Swift, Tove Lo), the sea-sprayed follow-up ‘Aquamarine’ managed to convey that same air of seduction and physicality, featuring an intoxicating embodiment of the ‘romanticise your life’ maxim: “The world is my oyster / And I’m the only girl.”
The fledgling pop star is far from the only TikToker who’s tried to make it in the music world; influencer behemoths like Dixie D’Amelio, Loren Gray and Bella Poarch are yet to experience a mainstream breakout. But Rae’s success can be put down to her genuine musical curiosity (her tastes range from FKA Twigs, Yves Tumor and Kelela, and she secured Arca for a remix of ‘Aquamarine’). She also has an undeniable It Girl appeal that pulls you into her paparazzi photos, in part thanks to her Y2K street fashion that’s reminiscent of early 2000s Britney Spears (and who can forget that shot of her reading the icon’s memoir). She’s even followed in the blasphemous footsteps of pop icons Madonna and Lady Gaga in offending the Christian faith by wearing a bikini emblazoned with the words “Father”, “Son” and “Holy Spirit”.
Rae’s mainstream pop impact solidified this year as she secured her first UK Top 10 and Billboard 100 position with ‘Diet Pepsi’. Now, she’s making song of the year lists. At a time when artists like Tate McRae and Tinashe are reviving the old school appeal of an all-dancing, all-singing pop star, it’s no surprise Rae is quenching a thirst music fans have long-endured. In just a few short years, she’s managed to outgrow her pandemic roots and make a meaningful stamp in an industry that won’t hesitate to shut the door in your face, even if you do have tens of millions of followers. When she declared “I’m not hiding anymore” in ‘Aquamarine’, she meant it. Right now, the world really is Addison Rae’s oyster.
