Will this be the summer of Addison Rae?

Over the last five years, Addison Rae has managed to make the jump from young internet celebrity to legitimate pop star.

It's a transition that can be almost impossible to manage, but with the success of her 2024 song Diet Pepsi and a brat summer tailwind from her appearance on Charli XCX's Von dutch remix, the former TikToker is ready to emerge as an artist all her own.

Today on Commotion, culture writer Joan Summers, music journalist Maura Johnston, and rapper Rollie Pemberton join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to share their thoughts on Rae's self-titled debut album, Addison.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion on the new Lorde single and the latest from the band Turnstile, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: We met Addison Rae as a TikTok influencer, and she's managed to do the improbable — which is, become a legitimate, bonafide pop star…. Today the debut album, Addison, came out. Joan, we've been talking about this moment for a minute…. Why is 2025 gonna be the summer of Addison Rae?

Joan: I think Addison Rae, you said just perfectly, did the impossible by fully transcending from TikTok stardom to pop stardom. It is a pipeline that has been paved by many other people before her, but none quite like her, where they started on the internet as a TikToker. She was a college student, cheerleading. She was in Louisiana, got on the Internet, and fully transitioned from that to this. And I think she's really the first one to do it in this way. 

What I think people are picking up on is, when she debuted, there was a lot of chatter about authenticity. Is this real? Can we trust what she's doing? Is this really coming from her heart, her soul? And I think despite all the criticisms she faced post-Diet Pepsi — which were totally unfounded and mostly teenagers on the internet, if you ask me — I think that she stuck to her guns. She did something weird. She put out something unlike any of what her peers are doing right now. She found some luminaries in New York, overseas to help produce the record. And speaking of that record and those luminaries: all women. I think it's one of the first pop albums this year that we can confidently say is produced entirely by a team of up-and-coming young women. So I'm very proud of her. And I just think that people are finally resonating with what she's rocking.

Elamin: Joan Summers said Addison Rae is for the girls…. When you survey the way that Addison is landing, Rollie, does it feel authentic to you? Do you hear this record and go, "This feels like you are trying to give me something that is coming genuinely from you."?

Rollie: You know, typically … my soul would tell me this is contrived, but knowing what's actually going on, I feel like it really is authentic. You know? I definitely feel like there was a bit of a PR blitz to establish Addison's coolness…. The Charli XCX co-sign — which by the way, that Von dutch remix is amazing. It's such an incredible song. That was the first thing that perked me up where I was like, "Oh wait, she's really about that life. She really wants to make music." It's not just a TikTok celebrity who's like, "How can I be more famous? Let me be an artist." It felt very authentic.

I think the fact that she's going with the Y2K aesthetic — you know, the headphones on, she got the iPhone earpods and everything — it feels like it's really true to her interests. And the aesthetic actually just works so much for her. I feel like seeing people like Charli XCX and Lana Del Rey really getting behind her, that's the ultimate co-sign for me. They don't just do that for anybody…. I'm like, okay, these are people who are genius pop stars, strategists, artists. They see something of that in Addison Rae, and that's why they want to get behind it, I think.

Elamin: I think it's really important to absorb how unlikely all of this is, because we are, I think, in a cultural moment that is very allergic to the inauthentic. I think we can kind of smell it right away. There's a sense of, "Oh, this feels like something beyond our control came together," [or]  "This was assembled in a boardroom somewhere." And whenever you get that sense, I feel like there's a sense of, I don't want to mess with this. I'm not rocking with it. But for her to transcend that mountain, it's a much higher and harder mountain to climb.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman.