Addison Rae Wants More Than Virality

On a humid summer Sunday in Red Hook, the Brooklyn enclave across the water from Wall Street, Addison Rae, 25, appeared almost as a mirage as she stepped onto the sunbaked pavement for this W shoot. She wore an oversize Katharine Hamnett stay alive in 85 tee and Manolo Blahniks, with bare legs. Her cascading blonde hair shimmered as always, impervious to the sweltering heat.

The jingle of an ice cream truck unexpectedly cut through the heavy July air. Seizing the moment, as if she were performing for her 88.3 million TikTok followers, Rae ran through the street, transforming Mister Softee’s surprise visit into impromptu street theater, pressing herself against the colorful truck and flitting between exaggerated body rolls and athletic thrusts.

“With arms wide open, I welcome spontaneity and unexpected decisions,” Rae said afterward, biting her lip before launching into affirmations that could have been cribbed from the lyrics of her dreamy debut album, Addison, which was released in June. “I trust my intuition. I trust my gut. I trust my heart. I trust my body language. I trust my physical self. I love communicating through my body, music, sound, and energy.”

Her trust in the unscripted has paid off. An isolated clip of the high-pitched scream she ad-libbed for Charli xcx’s “Von Dutch” remix with A.G. Cook has racked up more than 45 million views on TikTok. “Our biggest thing is making sure what we do is fun and spontaneous, with no pressure,” Charli said of those recording sessions. The pair first connected in 2022, after Charli heard a leaked demo of “2 Die 4”; Charli later contributed a verse to the track, which appeared on Rae’s 2023 EP, AR. “At the end of the day, there’s not much point in putting something out if you don’t have a good time while making it,” Charli added.

In July, Rae joined Lana Del Rey at London’s Wembley Stadium for a surprise duet of “Diet Pepsi,” Rae’s major-label debut single, followed by “57.5,” an unreleased Del Rey track that playfully skewers streaming-era celebrity. Sharing the stage with the singer was both a thrill and an education. “I learned so much about myself and about Lana,” said Rae. “Standing beside someone I admire, who lives her truth so gracefully, was life-changing. It all came together magically and unexpectedly. That was monumental for me.”

At the W shoot, Rae toggled between madcap mischief and studied sexiness. “No one come around this part of the set, I’m not wearing panties!” she screamed at one point, before kicking her legs into gymnastic arcs. She was unselfconsciously topless among strangers one moment as she changed outfits, then warmly embraced everyone around her the next. She exuded a genuine openness that has become a rare quality in modern celebrity—and one that she shrewdly knows is worth preserving.

Over the past year, Rae has assembled an intoxicating string of music videos. “Diet Pepsi” is a fast-cut collage that references both Cindy Crawford’s 1990s Pepsi commercials and Bruce Conner’s 1960s experimental films; it was directed by Sean Price Williams, known for his work with the Safdie brothers. In “Times Like These,” Rae lies on a studio floor on her side as another dancer takes her arm and pulls her into an intimate backstage dance sequence. In the pulsing “Aquamarine,” she embraces full showgirl glamour with sequins, glittery dresses, and feathered headpieces.

Growing up in Lafayette, Louisiana, Rae was always a put-on-a-show kind of girl. Despite her dreams of performing on the world stage, she was scared she wouldn’t ever make it past the prairies and wetlands of her home state. “Maybe I just dance for myself,” she recalled telling herself as a child. “Maybe I create for myself, even if no one ever acknowledges it.” The advent of micro-video culture, however, offered a way out. In July of 2019, while studying broadcast journalism at Louisiana State University, Rae joined TikTok, which had arrived in the U.S. just a year earlier. On the platform, she was the quintessential girl next door, overflowing with wholesome yet flirtatious Southern charm and dance-team polish. Whether lip-synching movie scenes or making fans wait for selfies while she filmed “a TikTok really quick,” she projected bright-eyed relatability across bedrooms and backyards. By October of that year, she had already hit 1 million followers, and she soon dropped out of college.

She threw herself into her work, posting up to eight videos a day. By late 2020, she had become one of TikTok’s most followed creators. Her rapid rise led to a slew of opportunities: modeling for American Eagle, signing a podcast deal with Spotify, launching a beauty brand sold at Sephora, starring in the He’s All That remake, and appearing on Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

Her talent for self-presentation extends beyond TikTok to video calls for work. A few weeks after the W shoot, I caught up with Rae via Zoom. She appeared on my screen stretched on her stomach across a Beverly Hills lawn, legs bent at the knees, feet crossed in the air, hydrangeas in bloom behind her. She rested her head on one hand, fingers brushing her cheek, while her other arm was casually draped in front of her. The effect of pin-up glamour meets easy informality was surely not accidental, but for a second I felt like I’d caught her mid-laugh during a private joke.

Rae’s rise hasn’t been cookie-cutter perfect. In 2021, she was criticized for performing viral dances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon without crediting the people who created them. Later that year, Anna Wintour faced backlash for inviting TikTok influencers, including Rae, to the Met Gala. Still, Rae told me she has always viewed setbacks as learning opportunities. She has long understood something that others are only now realizing: For some creators, TikTok fame isn’t the final goal but a stepping stone—a Warhol Factory for the digital age. “People wanted to say: This is all you’re good at,” she said of her influencer past. “But that made no sense.” Social media, she explained, “was only an opportunity to push myself toward something I always wanted, the dreams and hopes that were always there. There was something inside me that I refused to let disappear. By nurturing it consistently—whether by posting on TikTok, Instagram, Tumblr, or whatever outlet I could find—I wasn’t going to let that go.”

“A lot of people raised an eyebrow at her because she appears to be this bubbly, sweet pop persona, but she has a lot more to her,” said Bradley Stern, cohost of the pop culture podcast Legends Only. “I really haven’t seen scrutiny to this extent since Lana Del Rey: everyone questioning her authenticity, asking who’s actually pulling the strings, questioning how manufactured she is, and denying her agency as an artist.” Stern believes that skepticism misses the point. “It’s easy to shout ‘industry puppet’ or ‘not authentic,’ but things don’t pop off that easily. It’s not easy to create a convincing, cool pop star, or else this would happen more often and every influencer would do this,” he said. “She has the vision and works with creative collaborators who have the taste and aesthetic to achieve the desired result. That’s the whole point: It clearly comes from the core of her.”

Rae admits that her first attempt at music was messy. In early 2021, she signed with Sandlot Records, founded by hitmaker Jacob “JKash” Hindlin, and released her debut single, “Obsessed.” Cowritten by Rae, alongside Benny Blanco and a roster of industry regulars, the track featured lyrics that critics found overly simple and self-referential (“You say you’re obsessed with me / So I took a second / And I said, ‘Me too’ / I’m obsessed with me as much as you”). The single flopped, though Rae has said she hopes it will one day get its “Stars Are Blind” moment—a reference to Paris Hilton’s once-mocked debut that later gained cult appreciation.

While making Addison, which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 in June, Rae was far more deliberate. “I’m a very visual person, so everything was mapped out: colors, themes, how I wanted to translate them into a project. I made a binder. I printed out photos and colors and words. Before the album had any sonic world, before there was any audio involved, it was just purely visions, visuals, words,” she explained.

She worked exclusively with Swedish producers Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser, both in their 20s, to create a sophisticated blend of shimmering electronic sounds. “We were three girls in a room,” said Rae. “It was a very fun and free-flowing environment. There was no pressure to force ourselves to make an album or a certain number of songs. It just happened gradually over time.” Rae says that with only women in the studio, the recording sessions had a different energy. “We had this really magic moment making ‘Diet Pepsi’ on the first day we met, which is really crazy and almost seems so unrealistic,” she added. Yet it mirrored how things tend to happen in her life: simultaneously making “so much sense and also no sense at all.”

Released in August 2024 as the lead single from her 2025 debut, “Diet Pepsi” earned Rae her first major breakthrough. The New York Times critic Jon Caramanica ranked the breathy track No. 4 on his year-end list, calling it “the most saccharine whisper of the year.” Rae’s reverb-heavy vocals and dense soundscapes drew comparisons to Lana Del Rey’s 2012 Born to Die and Madonna’s late-’90s pop reset. “Diet Pepsi” nods to “Diet Mountain Dew,” and in “Aquamarine” Rae sings, “I’m the ray of light.” In “Money Is Everything,” Rae makes her artistic lineage explicit: “Please DJ, play Madonna / Wanna roll one with Lana.”

Like Madonna and Del Rey before her, Rae is consciously embodying the pop moment; only in her case, that means making the most of an era defined by likes, shares, and views. Her genius lies in turning TikTok trends, influencer clout, and algorithmic intuition into deliberate creative tools. A lifetime of switching between her private and public selves has sharpened Rae’s talent for improvisation and intimacy; she’s genuine enough to seem unpredictable and canny enough to know exactly how she should appear across our screens. Hers is a new kind of artistic blueprint: Get famous first through the feed; prove you’ve got creative chops once you’ve established an audience. That’s why her Addison transformation feels believable—she’s not replacing the content creator with the inner artist, but revealing how both sides work together. With a wink, a nod, and sometimes a shriek, Rae is signaling that she’s in it for the long run, showing the world she’s more than capable of referencing the legacy of pop icons while forging something entirely of her own.

“The magic really happens when you start creating purely for yourself,” she said. “People connect with it so much more, because there’s something genuine to discover.” She paused to blow a strand of hair from her face, then grinned. “I seek fearlessness. I want to be honest. I want to follow my gut.”

Hair by Mustafa Yanaz for Bumble and Bumble at Art + Commerce; makeup designed by Pat McGrath for Pat McGrath Labs; makeup by Jenna Kuchera for Pat McGrath Labs; manicure by Mei Kawajiri for Pleasing at Red Represents. Production design by Mary Howard.

Produced by AP Studio, Inc.; executive producer: Alexis Piqueras; producer: Anneliese Kristedja; production manager: Hayley Stephon; production coordinator: Kaitlyn Fitzpatrick; fashion assistants: Tyler VanVranken, Dylan Gue; production assistants: Linette Estrella, Ariana Kristedja, Sammi Kugler, Talulah Maltbie; hair assistant: Rachel Hopkins; manicure assistant: Linh Trinh; set assistants: Laura Pariot, Jason Beaucourt, Miles Bettinelli, Ian Landy, Kylie Baker; props courtesy of Hook Props; tailor: Elise Fife at Altered Management.