The music industry is currently dominated by women. Two of the most prestigious categories at this month’s Grammy Awards — Album of the Year and Best New Artist — were awarded to female artists. Among the nominated and awarded artists were a plethora of pop girls — including Chappell Roan, SZA, Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter and Charli XCX. As women have taken the industry by storm, their increasing ability to influence the media is undeniable. Strategically, Addison Rae associated herself with Charli XCX, one of the biggest female names in pop. This deliberate friendship and collaboration facilitated her transition from cringey TikToker to pop princess.
After lip syncing and dancing on TikTok in 2019, Rae earned herself the title of TikTok royalty as a founding member of the Hype House, one of the many collab-content houses that popped up in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Although many still associate her with this brief stint as a Hype House member, she’s lived many lives since then. She made her acting debut in a 2021 remake of the 1999 movie “She’s All That,” which unfortunately achieved a dismal 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. Later, she made an appearance on “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” and became public “besties” with Kourtney Kardashian. Furthermore, her popularity has been solidified through the astonishing number of “Addison Rae Iconic Moments” compilations. From pausing a fan interaction for a TikTok to being invited to perform a series of dances on the Tonight Show, Rae has no shortage of embarrassing clips. However, after years of attempts to break into various industries — film, television and music — she finally rebranded successfully.
Although Rae has been releasing music since 2021 — including a song on her EP “AR” that featured Charli XCX — her viral musical moment came three years later. In March of 2024, Charli XCX released her remixed version of “Von Dutch,” featuring Addison Rae and AG Cook. Charli bragged about Rae's perfectly pitched scream in a TikTok posted the day of the remix’s release. Charli emphasized that the unexpected scream was filmed in one take — and they didn’t know it was coming. Rae’s backing vocals and ‘iconic’ scream landed her a spot among “the ranks of the hyperpop girlies,” as one comment with almost 400,000 likes argued, with many others praising Rae’s scream and perfect pitch. While Charli XCX’s iconic party girl energy is near impossible to emulate, Rae’s post-virality musical identity was built upon this very schtick.
Rae’s sequential singles — “Diet Pepsi” and “Aquamarine” — reflect the iconic, clublike beat that Charli adopts in most of her songs. The explicit nature of both the lyrics and videos is starkly different from her extremely popular quarantine-era TikTok persona. She has garnered an impressive 304 million streams for “Diet Pepsi” and 34 million for “Aquamarine,” in addition to the virality of her songs on TikTok. Capitalizing upon the rising popularity of Charli’s “Brat Summer,” Rae released these two songs in August and October of 2024. In September, Charli invited Rae to accompany her for a guest appearance at her Madison Square Garden show, part of Charli XCX and Troye Sivan’s “Sweat Tour.” Not only did Rae show off her iconic scream for “Von Dutch,” but she also performed her own “Diet Pepsi” for an audience of almost 20,000. Both Charli and Troye, who are publicly close friends and have collaborated on multiple projects, boast largely queer fanbases. Rae’s exposure to this demographic facilitated her rise to stardom, as did the convenient timing of her performance and the release of her two singles.
More recently, her new single “High Fashion” surpassed an impressive 7 million streams after only 12 days since its release. Its music video harnesses the same party girl aesthetic that her previous singles have sought after, now with sparkles, 2000s inspired outfits, dance breaks in the rain and a mysterious white powder. The allusions to drug use in the video, despite the chorus, “I don’t need your drugs,” confirm her rebrand to a party girl alongside the likes of Charli XCX. Rae’s leap from cringe to cool seemed to happen overnight as the internet forgot her origins of fame.
After 2022’s “clean girl” and 2023’s “vanilla girl,” 2024 welcomed the shift to messier aesthetics. As “Brat” took center stage alongside the wide range of genres represented in 2024’s best albums, uniqueness became an essential component of popularity in the industry. Addison Rae made 2024 her comeback year by harnessing the public desire for a fresh, new party girl inspired by Charli XCX’s aesthetic. Further, Rae catered to the largely queer fanbase of Charli XCX in addition to her own pre-existing TikTok fanbase. With her unexpected shift from cheugy to life-of-the-party, Addison Rae is seamlessly entering the pop princess scene, and is likely to climb her way to the top in the years to come.
