The pandemic was so long that Addison Rae went from someone who you might recognize from doing TikTok dances with Jimmy Fallon to an actual legitimate rising pop icon. A mere four years ago, the Alabama-born influencer was a member of one of TikTok's first and cringiest content houses, The Hype House, which was known for ruling algorithms with "Renegade" dances and tie-dye hoodies. Now, she has garnered real pop star cred and queer fandom through her latest boundary-pushing singles. Through a seemingly honest rebrand, Rae has pulled off the impossible and courted a side of the internet that once laughed at her. In true Gen Z fashion, she has lived and died at the hands of the internet.
Addison Rae sprang to internet fame back in 2019 on TikTok, doing the types of dances that TikTok used to be infamous for. The then 19-year-old quickly joined a coterie of wholesome-looking teens doing stilted dances and making too much money from Bang Energy ads which eventually coalesced into the Hype House, along with Charli and Dixie D'Amelio, Chase Hudson (AKA Lil Huddy), and a host of other hard-to-tell-apart content creators who all also gained their notoriety online. Addison was the sweet Southern one with a propensity to put her foot in her mouth. They ruled "Straight TikTok" with an iron fist, bringing in mind-boggling numbers with a twitch of the hip.
Via @thehypehouse
The selling point of the Hype House stars was their relatability, and thus their bending to convention. Its members looked like the popular kids in your 10th grade class, Hollister-clad and fresh-faced. Their clothes were mass market and their dances were repeatable. In other words, they weren’t Hollywood-ified. They didn’t look like pop stars, they looked like polished teenagers. They made the average teenage TikTok user imagine they could be like them one day. After all, they weren’t that different.
On another side of the internet, though, Rae and the LA content house became the butt of a joke about young talentless people with outsize followings they didn’t deserve. As she released her single “Obsessed” in 2021, the ridicule heightened. Critics saw it as yet another hackneyed vanity project from a less-than-gifted influencer. Then she was seen cavorting with the Kardashians, pioneers of the talentless-but-famous trade, and it seemed like that's where she would stay. She toiled in the influencer realm, unable to convince most people she deserved her place in the spotlight.
Then, through an advantageous and seemingly genuine connection with hyperpop tastemaker Charli xcx, Addison Rae won over the side of the internet that had once despised her. She collaborated with Charli on “2 die 4” and the remix of “Von Dutch” from the album of the summer, brat. But the release of her recent singles “Diet Pepsi” and “Aquamarine” solidified her as a rising alt-pop voice. The accompanying music video for “Aquamarine” broke the mold of Rae’s previously flat and two-dimensional TikTok dances and showcased something fluid, collaborative, and sensual, literally and figuratively shedding dimensional shackles.
Via @addisonre
A vanguard of queer people online praised it with open arms and a healthy amount of surprise. This culminated in a feature on the cultural event of the summer, The Sweat Tour with Charli xcx and Troye Sivan where they performed “Diet Pepsi” together. Her music and image have now drawn comparisons to Lana Del Rey, Britney Spears, and other female pop icons. She's leaning into the comparisons, especially to Spears, with her early 2000s-inspired styling and paparazzi snapshots. She was even spotted reading Spears’s memoir, “The Woman in Me,” winkingly showcasing her commitment to her references.
The Addison Rae of 2024 doesn’t bend to that same convention that launched her into fame in 2019. She’s more aspirational than relatable, offering a portal to a dimension of art rather than a mirror reflecting back to her audience. She wears offbeat outfits, makes original music, and sets trends instead of following them. But more than just a clever self-marketing scheme or headline-grabbing sloppy rebrand in the vein of JoJo Siwa, Rae’s transformation takes a more genuine hue, or at least that’s how she has made it seem. She told Interview magazine, “The most underrated thing about me is my ability to evolve and transform. People like to say, ‘Her PR team is working overtime on the rebrand.’ And I’m like, ‘Girl, nobody’s rebranding. This is me.’”
Whether or not we choose to believe her, it seems as if she’s done the impossible. As Rae broke away from her white-bread TikTok fame, her Hype House counterparts weren’t able to do the same. The D’Amelios, for their part, went the Kardashian route with a reality show documenting their lives and a suite of consumer products branded in their name. The rest of her peers continue to tread the online boards, trudging the influencer path and begging to be forgotten. Though we’re still as glued to TikTok as ever, the grip of teens knocking around a mansion in Los Angeles once had on our feeds has now loosened. Perhaps this is the remnants of a bubble that has already burst. In the prolonged era of widespread panic, isolation, and indoor time that was 2020-2022, the teens of TikTok craved unchallenging material. But now, along with Addison, they’re growing up. They’re forging niche interests, reading up on culture history, and carving out their own place in it. In this way, Addison Rae is the ultimate example of a Gen Z pop star. She started her online life following an accepted idea of what was cool, and has come of age crafting her own version of it.
After all, the wholesome child star to revered pop star pipeline is a far from unforged path. Lest we forget, Britney herself began her career in the Hype House of the 90s, the Mickey Mouse Club.