In the midst of brat summer, Addison Rae strutted onto the stage at Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium. Joining her headlining friend Charli xcx for their "Von Dutch" remix, Rae's guest appearance was much more than just unabashed, spontaneous fun — it marked the beginning of a liberating new chapter.
Along with being Rae's first-ever live performance, the surprise moment set the tone for the confident singer/songwriter that would arrive with the sultry hit "Diet Pepsi" two months later. And almost exactly one year since her cameo with Charli, Rae is doubling down on her self-assured star power with her debut album, Addison.
Reflected by its colorful, kaleidoscopic album cover, Addison renders the vivid nature of Rae's artistic vision. Though she first saw success as a dancer (and one of the world's most famous at that, with more than 110 million followers and five billion likes across social media platforms collectively), Rae has focused more on music in recent years — and Addison epitomizes her multifacetedness.
"It's all under this one big umbrella of entertainment and performance: acting, dance, writing music," Rae tells GRAMMY.com. "Provoking people and getting them to feel things and question things and almost have an unexplainable feeling or desire to think about something deeper… it all kind of guides me in the same way. It's like, how can that feeling be activated the most intensely?"\
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Rae has been chasing that feeling ever since she moved to Los Angeles in 2019 to pursue dance and content creation full time. While the feeling almost instantly resonated with a social media audience, it presented some challenges as she explored other avenues. Upon releasing her debut single, "Obsessed," in 2021, it seemed the public was determined to still see Rae as an influencer, not yet an artist. The single was largely panned by critics, leaving her to question her musical path ("I just thought, Maybe I'm not good enough to do this," she told Vogue in 2023).
Yet, Rae didn't let the pressure creep into her head or heart, and she devoted herself to honing her sound and style. After a series of her rough demos leaked online in early 2022, the reaction indicated that she was doing something right: not only did listeners love them, they wanted more.
Along the way, Rae had met Charli xcx, who further helped her gain confidence in her artistry. By the end of 2023, Rae's musical dreams weren't so far off; she released her EP AR to positive reviews and scored a deal with Columbia Records. And once she wrote "Diet Pepsi" with songwriters Elvira Anderfjäard and Luka Kloser, Addison Rae the pop star was fully formed.
Swirling with hypnotic vocals and synths, "Diet Pepsi" captures the essence of Addison; the album spirals with an alluring desire and an untethered, joyful spirit. "I'm the ray of light/ I'm transforming and realigning/ I'll take you with me, high," she sings in the dreamlike "Aquamarine," embodying her metamorphic creative journey. Addison is a showcase of Rae's intense magnetism that comes with not just charisma and talent, but a hard-won belief in herself.
While the album is undoubtedly the product of the work she's put in, Rae insists that the people around her — Anderfjäard and Kloser, along with everyone from her stylist Dara to her choreographer Danielle Polanco to music video directors Mitch Ryan and Sean Price Williams — have been key to making her vision a success.
"We all have this equal desire to move people and to get people to connect and feel something deeply," the multi-hyphenate shares. "I think that is truly the magic of it all."
How did Rae manage to flip her narrative from underestimated social media star to one of pop's most engaging new voices? Below, Rae discusses her journey to her debut album, how she protects her peace, and what she's manifesting for 2025.
What was on your album inspo mood board? What does the world of Addison look and feel like to you?
Before I made any of the music, I was like, "What colors do I want to feel from the album?" Really early on — before "Diet Pepsi," the first song we made for the album — I had found shades of colors that I liked, and I printed them out and put them in a binder. It was this pretty aqua, then it was hot pink, super sunshiny yellow, a tone of green, and then a really beautiful vibrant blue. That told me that I wanted the album to be a lot of different things and not just one thing, and so that gave me a weird sense of guidance.
That happened naturally. We didn't really have a plan for what the album cover was gonna be, and then we shot it and printed the photos out, and that one just spoke to me so strongly, of what every song individually made me feel, [all] in one [photo]. It was just this rainbow energy that really inspired the songwriting — how can I encapsulate every shade, every feeling, every emotion, every sound that gave me enough to feel everything?
Tell me about an "aha" moment you had about the direction of your album when you were working on one of your singles.
To be honest, I think before I even started writing the album, [the] "Von Dutch" remix had happened, and that was my first "aha" moment as a songwriter, which was only last year.
When Charli and I did the session for "Von Dutch," she had sent me the track and was like, "I really want you to be on the remix of this song that I have coming out"... She prefaced what the song was about like, "Oh, it's kind of like to the haters and like 'you're just jealous.'" I was like, "Oh my God, I love this."
I told her, "I have a note [in my notes app with the lyric], 'You're sitting in your dad's basement, while I'm just doing me and following my dreams.'" I sent that to her and I was like, "How funny, this is kind of around that concept," and she was like, "Oh my gosh, we have to put that lyric in the song, like we have to keep it exactly the way you said it."
I was like, "Okay, perfect. I'm just gonna write down some other stuff and I'll send it to you and like let me know what you think," and I mindlessly wrote down a bunch of stuff that was inspiring to me, elaborating on that feeling of judgment from other people. It's such an old thing to say "when people are mean, they're just jealous," but I leaned into that…I sent [Charli] all of that and she was like, "Incredible, come to the session tomorrow and let's record the song."
I was so shocked to have Charli trust me so much with the lyrics that I was writing. It was really the first time that I felt confidence in myself as a songwriter, because obviously Charli is so incredibly talented and has been in this industry for so long. I['ve] started to lean on myself as a songwriter since that moment.
Some people might have the misconception that you suddenly discovered a passion for music recently. How long have you been wanting to pursue singing and songwriting, and what inspired you to fully pursue music? Was it that moment with Charli?
Because I grew up in competitive dance and [started dancing] at 6 years old, I think dance was always a really big motivation for me wanting to make music and to be a singer and an artist. When you dance to songs, you really get to learn a lot about music and musicality and rhythm, and I was always intrigued by the bigger picture of that and why I felt a certain way when I danced to songs, or why it made me want to move in a certain way. And since I was little, I loved to sing.
What I lean on in myself in my singing is being able to create some sort of world or energy or magic in vocal layering and harmonizing and really interesting ad-libs, and songwriting and melody being so strong that it's almost like this gravitational pull and makes you move… I love playing with different deliveries of lines, and I love pushing myself to explore new ranges that I have. I feel really confident in the way that I sound and the way that I sing, and I feel really confident in the imperfections in that as well.
It's been 4 years since your debut single. What have you learned about yourself as a singer or just about the music industry in the years since you released your debut single?
I learned that If you want something, you just have to keep working at it every single day. I love "Obsessed"... obviously my first single [is] always going to have a really special place in my heart. [But] at the time, I definitely had less confidence in myself as a songwriter, and I think I was a little bit more afraid of being vulnerable and raw.
I've learned that growth takes time and experience takes time. When "Obsessed" came out, a lot of people were like, "Why are you releasing music? You haven't struggled in music, you haven't put in the years that it takes to become an artist!" and I'm like, Well then, I'm gonna put in the years of the years of work!
So after "Obsessed" came out, I took a break from releasing music and I was in the studio all the time. I was writing and forcing myself to feel uncomfortable in writing alone, and then I slowly started eliminating elements of the room. [Meaning] I started off writing music in rooms of four people — it'd be me, two songwriters and a producer, and I think initially that felt like the right thing for me to do, to learn the ropes and to learn how people write. When I first came [to LA] I was like, I don't even know how to write songs in the right way. Or is there a right way?
Growing up, I always thought music was so magic and I could never understand the intricacies of going to a session and writing music with people. When I was little, I was like, Hannah Montana wrote it all and did it all, you know what I mean? As a kid, you don't think about the fact that there's a million moving pieces inside of a song.
There's so many different parts to it. Since you mentioned collaboration, you worked a lot with Luka and Elvira, and you've spoken a lot about your amazing creative team as well. What's most important to you when it comes to collaboration, and what sort of creatives do you like to surround yourself with?
I got really lucky meeting Luka and Elvira because we had such a quick spark of inspiration and passion and comfortability that I think is really hard to find, and I can't believe we found it so quickly. We made "Diet Pepsi" the same day that we had met each other and first worked together, so it was really this cosmic, beautiful, magical thing that is so unexplainable. It doesn't even make sense to us — we're like, How did we even get there?
But the entire album is [written by] just me, Luka, Elvira, with one additional girl that's [a co-writer] on "High Fashion." That is so rare in itself to have a room of women in a studio, creating something so freely, and [something so] feminine and deep and beautiful and magical, and [that's] such a reflection of womanhood and my experiences and their experiences combined. We really leaned on each other, and that came so naturally. My other creative relationships [are the same way].
I'm so lucky that I get to work with people that I consider my best friends… For me, it was making sure everybody I brought into the project felt really strongly about the music first, and then as a result, we really came together and created something that reflected the music. Obviously, like I said, I work with a team of artists that are artists on their own, and having them there to bounce ideas off of and brainstorm and really just make it as beautiful and multi-perspective as possible.
It makes me so happy that you're surrounded with so many amazing friends that share that similar passion.
I know, I really am lucky. It feels like we're in school and somehow found our group of people that just love creating things really passionately and intensely, [especially] every single person that is involved in the music videos.
The music videos are such a huge part for me; that was an essential component, creating music with a visual world and a visual language and dance incorporated into that, and being able to act in my videos and really put on a true performance in a lot of ways.
A really powerful relationship in my life is my relationship with a camera. And I think it's been very obvious that that's been a thing for a while. Since I started on TikTok, all of these things come together as a way that I can connect with a camera and really convey emotions through the screen. That is a tool that I love to use. It's a natural gift for me to be able to communicate through that, so the music being so close to my heart and me really opening up and sharing my feelings in a songwriting sense could really aid and be a companion to the visuals.
Speaking of your relationship with the camera, you don't post as much online as you used to — but at the same time, your album does share insight into your life. Was that intentional, like you wanted to let the album do the talking instead of your socials?
Yeah, definitely. Early on in my career, I had a bit of time where I was very open to sharing every detail of my life and putting myself on display, and I realized pretty quickly that although I was posting a lot and sharing a lot, I wasn't actually sharing my perspective or my feelings towards things in my life. The music became such a strong outlet for that because I could do it in a way that I felt comfortable and safe and protected, and allow it to connect with people in a way that wasn't so direct, maybe, but still very truthful.
I also was posting so much that didn't really say a lot, and I think the music says so much. I therefore don't think I need to be posting, you know, the intricacies and the ins and outs of everything. I do think the music should speak for itself.
In order to put the emphasis and the value on the music and the visuals that my team and I have so carefully crafted and put our hearts and passions into, I want to give that all the attention that I can because of how much hard work has gone into it. I don't need to distract from it.
When you first started getting followers in college, did it take you a while to adjust to the fame? How do you preserve your peace today? Is it through making music?
It's always a work in progress, preserving your peace. Growing up is an interesting experience, and sometimes I'm like, How do people do this? Like, how do people navigate life? I have no idea.
But yeah, music has been such a safe space for me, and so I've gone into the studio with an open heart and an open mind… it's almost like therapy in those moments to be able to really express yourself in ways that you feel comfortable in. Music was always an escape for me and such a comfort space. I really lean on music to give myself that peace and expression, and to feel like I'm working through things slowly but surely.
What are some of the most special moments for you since you've officially launched your music career?
Obviously performing with Charli was such an eye-opening experience. My first ever time performing was with Charli, and so was my second time performing. Having someone like her to show me how much hard work and dedication and being true to yourself pays off has been incredible. I really appreciate everyone that I collaborate with because they are so open and willing to hear me spill out all my wildest dreams, and they are willing to and excited to be a part of making those things happen.
What are your biggest goals for your music career, and what are you manifesting for 2025?
I'm a big believer in manifestation and speaking things into existence, and I think I've done that throughout my whole career this far.
I'm hoping that I will get to do a lot more live performances and my interpretation of my music for people in-person, and I'm hoping that the album is received really well. For me, it's less about the way that it performs number-wise or on the charts — it's really about people connecting with it, and being open to receive the music and feel it for what it is, which is a reflection of my life experiences and my heart, and growing up and understanding this crazy world a little bit more every day.
I hope I get to spend a lot more time with the people that I create with and love. That's kind of my goal for 2025, to continue growing as an artist. This is my first album, and I think there's a lot of high expectations for me, which I really appreciate and love because I do think that it helps me to push myself for greatness.
But I also do have understanding of the fact that it is my first album, so I try not to put too much pressure on myself. I'm growing as an artist and I'm developing every single day… so I'm giving myself grace and time.