“Can’t a girl just have fun?” Addison Rae asks during Money is Everything, an almost-ambient interlude close to the top of her debut album that pointedly places style over substance. The answer, if these 12 songs are anything to go by, is yes. But for her listeners, the truth is more complicated.
‘Addison’ finds the TikTok star turned pop girl of the hour shaking off her days of studied virality to make some feelgood music that takes notes from pop icons of past and present. Her debut opens abruptly with the house-inspired New York, where her signature whispered vocals are set against a pulsating beat. It’s a red herring, though, as nothing else here sounds remotely similar.
The singles Diet Pepsi and Headphones On offer the record’s best moments. Both are infectious and boast the type of bold choruses many artists could only dream of. Unfortunately, they are exceptions, not the rule.
Rae’s carefree persona has earned her an army of fans, but trying to dial in that energy here results in the cringe-inducing High Fashion and cliched In The Rain. Lost & Found, another brief interlude, feels like a cool idea that hasn’t been fully realised, while several bland tracks drift by before transitioning clumsily into the next.
Throughout, Rae wears her influences on her sleeve. At times, the record does well to conjure the spirit of turn of the century pop, even if it rarely captures the power of its formative sounds. Fame is a Gun, for example, is a saccharine number that falls somewhere between Britney Spears and a Disney Channel original, while the dizzying synths of Aquamarine are obviously informed by Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’.
‘Addison’ has the raw materials of a promising debut, particularly a string of singles that set the bar high, but it ultimately fails to build on that momentum. Its moments of pop perfection are sprinkled between uninspiring fare that adds up to a big nothing.
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