No one in pop has had a year like Addison Rae. She may not be the biggest star – that remains Taylor Swift – or even the most commercially successful breakout act.
But the dreamy dance-pop haze of her debut album, Addison, made her into an artist’s artist, loved by the likes of Charli xcx and Lana Del Rey – the leftfield pop acts who paved the way for someone like her. (The Guardian)
Like a pre-Brat Charli CXC, or perhaps Sky Ferreira, the 25-year-old is the pop connoisseur’s choice, justly earning comparisons to Del Rey, her fellow Louisiana girl Britney Spears and Ray of Light-era Madonna, while knowing her way around her R&B and Jersey club. She’s up for best new artist at next year’s Grammy awards – and with Addison and its knowingly anaesthetised single Headphones On placing in the Guardian’s top five albums and tracks of 2025 respectively, she’s our artist of the year.
So it’s crazy to flick back just two years to when Rae wasn’t just a flop, but a punchline. In 2021, she released her debut single Obsessed, a perfectly average Benny Blanco-produced single that attracted disproportionate hatred because Rae was then just a TikTok star whose breezy dance videos had made her the platform’s fifth most-followed figure.
The song flopped. Two years later came the AR EP: featuring a Charli guest verse – she asked to feature on a leaked demo that she loved – it made Rae a cult favourite. Last summer, she returned the favour, guesting on a remix of Charli’s Von Dutch: “While you’re sitting in your dad’s basement … Got a lot to say about my debut!” Rae taunted.
Now, she says, she’s relieved Obsessed didn’t work out. “I wasn’t ready to stand in front of people and say what I say as concisely and straightforwardly as I am now. I’ve grown up so much in the past few years. Life happens to you at such a quick rate once you start realising how in the driver’s seat you actually are.”
From there, she’ll perform across Europe in September, making stops in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin and Cologne.
Afterwards, Rae will kick off the North American leg with a show in Austin, Texas on September 22, followed by gigs in Dallas, Nashville, Brooklyn, Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles and more. Then, in November, she’ll wrap up the tour with three concerts in Australia, stopping in Melbourne (11), Brisbane (14) and Sydney (17).
Last June, she posted a video of her underwater as the then-unreleased track “Aquamarine” played over it. Lead single “Diet Pepsi” was dropped in August, with “Aquamarine” officially arriving a couple months later. Ahead of the album, she unveiled five total songs off the LP, all with their own videos.
“Times Like These” is the latest in her stream of singles and arrives with a dance-heavy new video. The visual was directed by photographer Ethan James Green.
Rae’s debut album was written and produced by Rae with Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser, both of whom are Max Martin’s protégées. “We were both shocked [that] her taste leaned very left and underground at times,” Kloser told Rolling Stone in Rae’s cover story earlier this year.
Addison arrives nearly four years after Rae first tried to make the jump from TikTok stardom to pop. She released her first single “Obsessed” in 2021, which ended up not taking off as she hoped. She ended up scrapping her first EP, but after the songs leaked and generated buzz online, she put them out in 2023.
Rae has since signed to Columbia Records. Before unveiling her solo songs, she further cemented more Main Pop Girl points by appearing on a remix of Charli XCX’s “Von Dutch.” She has performed the song live with XCX at a Brat release show in Los Angeles as well as the UK star’s 2025 Coachella set.
