{"id":100730,"date":"2025-12-19T06:02:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T06:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/100730\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T06:02:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T06:02:24","slug":"addison-rae-on-diet-pepsi-the-grammys-and-pop-girl-rivalries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/100730\/","title":{"rendered":"Addison Rae on ‘Diet Pepsi,’ the Grammys and pop-girl rivalries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Addison Rae slides into a booth at Bob\u2019s Big Boy in Burbank and orders \u2014 what else? \u2014 black coffee and a chocolate milkshake.<\/p>\n

The singer, actor and social media personality has been on a David Lynch<\/a> kick of late; this, of course, is where the late filmmaker famously came every afternoon for years to sustain himself with that order while he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went into a meeting the other day and mentioned that I\u2019d watched \u2018Wild at Heart\u2019 the night before,\u201d says Rae, who\u2019s 25. She\u2019s wearing tight jeans, heels and a baggy Harvard hoodie and twirls the sweatshirt\u2019s drawstrings in her fingers as she speaks. \u201cThey were so astounded. I was like, \u2018Is this not just one of the things you should know if you\u2019re in this business?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In June, Rae released her debut album, \u201cAddison,\u201d which she recorded in Sweden with the producers Elvira Anderfj\u00e4rd and Luka Kloser. Crisp but languid, sensual yet slightly sinister, the LP sounds like Britney Spears doing Lana Del Rey (or maybe vice versa) \u2014 a smart and stylish set of aqueous electro-pop jams that keep taking slightly weirder turns than you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

\u201cAddison\u201d earned rave reviews and has racked up hundreds of millions of streams; the single \u201cDiet Pepsi\u201d alone is at more than half a billion on Spotify. For Rae, who grew up dreaming of moving to Los Angeles from her hometown of Lafayette, La., the album\u2019s success registered as another step in a showbiz journey that began with DIY dance videos she posted as a teenager on TikTok (where today she counts more than 88 million followers).<\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s also made her a darling among tastemakers who might not have caught her in the smiley 2021 Netflix teen comedy \u201cHe\u2019s All That<\/a>.\u201d In February, Rae will compete at the 68th Grammy Awards for the coveted best new artist prize \u2014 a category in which her competition includes Alex Warren<\/a>, a fellow alum of the once-dominant TikTok collective Hype House.<\/p>\n

A lot of the reaction to your album \u2014 the energy has basically been: Hold up, this is pretty good.
I\u2019ll take a win where I get it [laughs]. I\u2019ve actually gotten really comfortable in this space of everyone thinking that everything I do will be mediocre and me doing something better than that and them being surprised. I do think that will change, though.<\/p>\n

What do you think is behind the low expectations? Certainly, part of it is because you\u2019re a woman and that\u2019s the world we live in.
Boring.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the TikTok of it all. You\u2019ve said you started dancing on TikTok as a kind of end run around the gatekeepers of show business. What\u2019s it been like to earn those gatekeepers\u2019 praise?
As confident as I am about my process and my artistic view, it\u2019s very flattering. For a while, I started to convince myself that I didn\u2019t care. And I actually think that was a great way to make the album. People were very skeptical \u2014 even people that are choosing to embrace me now. Which is nice. I\u2019m glad they\u2019ve changed their mind.<\/p>\n

You clearly made the right album. Have you thought about what the wrong album would\u2019ve been?
The label definitely wasn\u2019t keen on \u201cDiet Pepsi\u201d being the first song. They were like, \u201cWe don\u2019t think this is what people are expecting from you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did you have a sense of what they thought people were expecting?
I think there was an idea of what my music should sound like.<\/p>\n

Which was?
Bad? Bad or soulless or maybe just a little more shallow, I guess. And by the way, I love shallow music. When I put out my first single, \u201cObsessed<\/a>\u201d [in 2021], it was very much based on what I thought I wanted to be as an artist. And over time that changed. Thank God for the critics \u2014 without them, I maybe would\u2019ve kept doing music like \u201cObsessed\u201d and not pushed myself to try things that people didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n

Although you\u2019ve said you\u2019re awaiting your \u201cStars Are Blind<\/a>\u201d moment for \u201cObsessed.\u201d
Of course. \u201cObsessed\u201d is a fun pop song, and I think it will get its love.<\/p>\n

Your friend Rosal\u00eda told<\/a> Rolling Stone about you: \u201cI love how she brings the 2000s American pop star back to these days.\u201d Does that map onto what you feel it is you do?
I don\u2019t know \u2014 it\u2019s kind of confusing. I think my music is very now as much as it\u2019s a conglomeration of my life. I was a baby in the 2000s and grew up watching everything in the 2000s, so naturally that\u2019s what I was raised on. My mom always had on MTV. But I think the 2000s was an era of pop that will never be replicated. It was all so new. It was an era of undeniable stardom \u2014 of pop being unafraid to be provocative and risky.<\/p>\n

I think of that time as the moment when pop became fully aware of itself. Every pop star\u2019s performance was a performance of pop stardom.
I totally see that. I appreciate the people that say I\u2019m thoughtful or strategic \u2014 that gives me a lot of credit, actually, because I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case all the time. When you say you want to be a pop star, people reference someone like a Britney or a Gaga or a Rihanna \u2014 there\u2019s an idea of what a pop star means. I don\u2019t really care about being a pop star. I just want to be a star.<\/p>\n

\"Addison <\/p>\n

Addison Rae performs at New York\u2019s Terminal 5 in October.<\/p>\n

(Christopher Polk \/ Billboard via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Is your priority at the Grammys to beat Alex Warren?
I have no agenda going into this [laughs].<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an honor just to be nominated?
It really is! I was shocked. The night before the nominations were announced, my managers were like, \u201cShould we get together and watch it?\u201d That puts so much pressure on it. I always wondered with these people that post videos of themselves reacting to nominations \u2014 what if it didn\u2019t happen? Do they have confetti and just don\u2019t blow it?<\/p>\n

What\u2019d you end up doing?
I was like, Maybe we go to Tower Bar, and if it doesn\u2019t happen we just get breakfast \u2014 try to treat the day normally. Then I was like, Maybe we don\u2019t want to be there because if it does happen I want to be able to react the way I want to. So we just went to my managers\u2019 office, and it was very chill. I\u2019d looked at all the lists of predictions, and the only place that predicted I would get nominated was Pitchfork. So the odds were not looking great for me. Then they said my name \u2014 I was like [gasps]. That was all I could say.<\/p>\n

Did you see the fake email<\/a> that went around where you\u2019re thanking the Recording Academy?
Oh my God, I saw it. By the way, people believed that. Maybe I would have too \u2014 I\u2019m really gullible. Nobody has any idea what\u2019s real.<\/p>\n

I had to admire the specificity of the fake, with the ChatGPT prompt and all.
No, like, who did this?<\/p>\n

Part of the Grammys discourse, especially with you and Alex, has been about the show opening itself to musicians who\u2019ve taken nontraditional paths to success. Before you were nominated, did the Grammys seem like a world that was available to you?
I didn\u2019t think it was something that was not gonna happen because of that. People have come from Disney, which was not considered as highly artistic or credible as other paths.<\/p>\n

Although it took Miley Cyrus until \u201cFlowers\u201d to win a Grammy.
Which is insane. I think that gave me hope that it all evolves \u2014 that when something deserves attention and conversation, it\u2019ll get it, no matter where it came from.<\/p>\n

We seem to be living in an age of pop-girl rivalries. Do you agree, and if so does that bum you out?
It doesn\u2019t have to be a thing, but I get it \u2014 it\u2019s entertaining. Historically, there\u2019s always been this friendly or maybe unfriendly competition between people. I think it\u2019s a very natural human thing to want to exceed a standard that someone else has laid out. I\u2019m not really interested it for myself. I think it takes away from the reason I want to do any of this stuff.<\/p>\n

Can you avoid it? Take Taylor Swift versus your friend Charli XCX as an example. I wonder whether you feel like you have to take a side.
I guess we\u2019ll have to see. But there\u2019s so much more to all these things. There are people that do weird things, and I try to avoid those people.<\/p>\n

What are the weird things?
Well, you know, this can be behind the scenes as well \u2014 producers and drama in writing and ideas and back-end conversations. On my record with Luka and Elvira, we had worked with someone \u2014 or tried to include them in something \u2014 and then we didn\u2019t really feel like it was necessary. No bad blood. Then all of a sudden, this person had gone and worked with someone else, and things were sounding similar. The timeline of it all was very confusing and interesting.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not up on this story.
I\u2019ve never talked about it.<\/p>\n

So even if I dig around \u2014
You wouldn\u2019t know. I mean, I think there are people that maybe would know things. But I\u2019m not interested in getting into the nitty-gritty of it all. It\u2019s so irrelevant.<\/p>\n

\"Elvira <\/p>\n

Elvira Anderfj\u00e4rd, from left, Addison Rae and Luka Kloser at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles in August.<\/p>\n

(Rebecca Sapp \/ Getty Images for The Recording Academy)<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve said you worked to get rid of your Southern accent. How\u2019d do you do it?
I have a really good English accent, so I think I\u2019m just good at accents. People say they can still hear it on a certain word or phrase.<\/p>\n

The interior monologue in your head \u2014 it\u2019s with a Southern accent or without?
It\u2019s without.<\/p>\n

This is just your voice now.
I think so, yeah. It\u2019s like I\u2019m Method acting [laughs]. When I go home and I\u2019m around my family \u2014 my grandma has a very thick Cajun accent \u2014 it comes out. I\u2019m just not around anyone that has a Southern accent \u2014 I\u2019ve been living here for almost six years now. When I\u2019m drunk, sometimes it\u2019ll come out.<\/p>\n

When you moved to L.A., you wanted to sing, dance and act. Has your success in music reshaped your ambitions for acting?
I feel like it\u2019s all one and the same to me \u2014 I just want to perform, and wherever that finds its home is where I\u2019m putting my energy. I wouldn\u2019t say that every night on tour before I went onstage I was necessarily in the best mood of my life. Some nights, you\u2019re crying before you go on, so you\u2019re kind of acting in a way to put on this performance for people. I\u2019m very ambitious in general. I love chasing big dreams, and if that comes in the form of an amazing script or a director that I really love and trust, I\u2019m 10 toes deep.<\/p>\n

Your interest in performance is still broad.
I don\u2019t think it\u2019ll ever narrow down. I don\u2019t know why it would. Someone like Barbra Streisand is someone I\u2019ve always loved and looked up to. Judy Garland too. Even Marilyn Monroe. I mean, she was doing it all. I just think: Why would you not want to do it all?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Addison Rae slides into a booth at Bob\u2019s Big Boy in Burbank and orders \u2014 what else? \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[8121,54887,54886,44539,15380,28646,45860,4681,48,52,51,47,50,49,330,1869,592,1406,4424,4610,3808],"class_list":["post-100730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-addison-rae","tag-alex-warren","tag-american-pop-star","tag-debut-album","tag-diet-pepsi","tag-grammys","tag-great-way","tag-idea","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-music","tag-night","tag-people","tag-performance","tag-success","tag-thing","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}