Addison Rae Is The Post-Woke Pop Star No One Asked For (And Everyone’s Watching)

Unlike most of the pop girls, she actually feels like her own person. The 24-year-old has an unbothered kind of brilliance, one that doesn’t resist the “Y2K in the 2020s” algorithm but glides through it in lip gloss and a flat-brim hat, humming lyrics that sound like diary entries from a teenage it-girl who never stopped being watched.

Rae isn’t trying hard to be liberal like Chappell Roan, and despite all of the trends she’s started, she isn’t trying to lead a movement. She’s not attempting to wave a flag or spark a debate. For the most part, she does whatever she wants. She gets hate all of the time because she once introduced herself to Donald Trump at a UFC fight. In an interaction caught on camera, Rae was excited to meet Trump and politely introduced herself to the president. The internet still doesn’t quite know how to process it. Was she being ironic? Was she clueless? Did she care? This is just one of the many examples of her simply not caring about the leftist politics that pervade LA, where she rose to fame.

Her rise isn’t new. She was TikTok famous in her teens, after all – but it’s different. There aren’t too many influencers-turned-pop stars. Rae, unlike many curated online personalities and stars, seems to have understood the assignment: don’t chase credibility. Be yourself. Be girly in your persona, have fun with your clothes. Be sexy, be sweet, and don’t explain yourself.

Her debut singles – “Diet Pepsi,” “Aquamarine,” “High Fashion,” and most recently, “Headphones On” – are breathy, glitchy, and emotionally direct. Her music sounds like pop from a world adjacent to ours: early 2000s mall culture, Tumblr heartbreak, and Lana Del Rey’s disillusionment were mashed together and filtered through the speakers of Pilates classes. Addison Rae is, in a way, an amalgamation of the popular subcultures in the past 20 years. She’s acting as a mirror, a representative of the messy zeitgeist. 

There’s always been something interesting about her aesthetic choices, too. Her paparazzi shots are styled like performance art. There’s one of her walking down a busy sidewalk, fully reading a book. Another has her pumping gas in what can only be described as an aggressively eclectic outfit: a red and white dress, a black hat, and black heels. None of it makes sense. She looks like she’s cosplaying being famous, and somehow it works. Rae’s genius, in my opinion, is in pretending not to try. Her shorts and heels outfits are considered unattractive by most people, but the girls on the internet think they’re a slay. Her team understands what the culture wants, even when the culture doesn’t. 

Unlike Taylor Swift and her use of feminism, Olivia Rodrigo's "female rage," Charli XCX’s promotion of “brat summer” and dirtbag culture, or Chappell Roan being a voice for the trans movement, Rae is not starting a rebellion. Virtue signaling is overplayed and tired. She’s a reflection of what happens when you stop asking pop stars to be saviors. And for a lot of young women right now, her chaos and her ability to create something that is hers (even if her songs are "mid," even if her photo-ops are "strange") feel more honest than anything else most popstars have to offer. 

The post-woke cultural landscape is fragmented. Earnestness is policed, irony is everywhere, and sex appeal is treated with suspicion. Meanwhile, Rae doesn’t sidestep that conversation, nor does she participate in it. Her version of femininity is all blown-out hair and cigarette imagery. She’s also emerged at a time when American culture is circling back to familiar aesthetics. We’re embracing sexiness again in the same way we repeatedly played “Hit Me Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears on TV. 

Ironically, there aren't major headlines or overexposure of Rae in the same way Katy Perry’s career has in the past couple of years. No space trips for Rae. Just leaks, collaborations with Charli XCX and Arca, a few carefully released singles, and enough cultural cachet to make Pitchfork call her album the most anticipated of the year.

There’s no triumph arc, and she’s not trying to turn pain into a branding exercise. Rae is literally just existing in glitter, not for an audience, but for herself. Rae herself once said, “It’s not my job to persuade anybody how to feel about me, or if they think I’m cool or not.”