INDIO, California — When Addison Rae appeared during her Coachella Main Stage set on Saturday evening, she held her body very still, her arms raised over her head. Clutching a Barbie pink cage seemingly for dear life, she stood there in a flouncy costume for a long beat, letting the crowd’s roar wash over her.
In the past year, the TikToker-slash-dancer has had one of pop music’s more fascinating and controversial arcs, and the slow-burn entrance felt telling for Rae’s trajectory: The Coachella set, the first date in her worldwide “Fame and Glory Show” tour, was the last brief moment before jumping into yet another pivotal inflection point in her trajectory.
She then had her dancers help her down the steps descending from the cage, launching into her ethereal standout, “Diet Pepsi.” What distinguishes this song (and Rae’s music, for that matter) is a knowingness that still sounds thrillingly intimate, as though she’s entrusting you with something she recently learned about herself. Rae’s vocals sounded a little choppy at first — nerves, perhaps — and it took her a few songs to settle in. But the crowd was with her from the jump, exploding into a cathartic sing-along during the woozy chorus of “Diet Pepsi.”
Rae first became famous in 2019 by posting videos on the internet, amassing a huge audience by locating the precise rhythms of attention. A guest role in a Netflix show, an American Eagle modeling gig and a reality show appearance followed, with her first single, “Obsessed,” debuting in 2021. Notably, Rae’s show didn’t play as much to the camera as it did to the huge crowd who’d jostled past Justin Bieber fans — who had posted up a full six hours before his set Saturday night — to see Rae up close. Midway through the set, she leapt into the crowd asking fans to scream into the mic, shrieking with excitement while performing a thumping version of her remix of Charli XCX’s “Von Dutch.”
Keeping with the vampy theatrical concept of Rae’s set — like “Moulin Rouge,” but if the French dancers had shopped at the early-aughts icon Fred Segal circa 2003 instead of donning feathers — she put on a boa made of fake dollar bills. She then asked the crowd to join her in a chant that is the title of one of her songs: “Money is everything!”
The eponymous song smacks of the push-pull that young people constantly grapple with: To save for the future, or to live a throttling life now since said future seems improbable. Rae’s sharp lyricism in songs like these has earned her rightful accolades, but her moodier tunes were outstanding in the set — including “In the Rain,” reminiscent of peak Hilary Duff with a touch of Britney Spears-era production. Another highlight was the escapist anthem “Headphones On,” replete with the purple hoodie she donned in the music video.
Like Spears, Rae is a consummate dancer from Louisiana, and at several points, her set felt more like a love letter to movement than a forum to belt cuts from her album “Addison.” The choreography ranged from the punchy styles that play well on TikTok, belly dancing, vogue and a modern ballet routine she performed with Maddie Ziegler, known for her appearance in “Dance Moms.”
Rae seemed most at ease in these energetic moments, only seeming to gather more power as the set went on. As she closed with “Fame is a Gun,” the song’s tantalizing take on the pitfalls of infamy felt thrillingly visceral. It’s like she knows a thing or two about it.