Between an uninspired track that borders on vanity and an okay remaster of Lady Gaga’s scrapped demo, the bar for Addison Rae’s discography post-AR could not sink lower.

But after a wildly successful five-single run, her debut mononymous album Addison makes good on the promise of the twenty-four-year-old’s sonic upheaval.

Trading her generically produced pop beats for an entrancing, synth-forward ambience, songs like “Diet Pepsi”, “High Fashion”, and “Summer Forever” hold the listeners’ hands as they take us into the soundscape Rae built alongside producers and co-writers Luka Kloser and Elvira Anderfjärd, the same women who brought some of Ariana Grande’s and Tove Lo’s music to life.

Billed as her first and last album, Rae flexes not only her feathery falsettos, but also her sharp acuity for musical experimentation.

Addison isn’t concerned with the idiosyncrasies or conventions that set up the current trend of gritty club kid and rave synth formulating today’s pop. It chose instead to derive from the way Rae moves her body, translating her languid and sensual dance moves through pulses of electric drum kits and ripples of undulating synths. The result is an evocation of the lush sonic world of the 90s and 2000s, taking cues from the house-forward mood of Madonna’s Ray of Light and disco tracks like Sheila E.’s “Glamorous Life”, which was referenced in the lyrics of “Fame is a Gun”.

The homage to the pop girl zeitgeist doesn’t stop there—she even name-drops stars like Madonna, Lana, and Gaga as well as “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” and the annoyingly catchy “Pocketful of Sunshine” in the lyrics to “Money is Everything”. Still, beyond nods to pop darlings, the writing of the record remains the standout.

While lines like “Summer love, sexy” and “With a cigarette pressed between my tits” may border lyrically trashy, the tone of the whole record set them up as unserious camp instead. Still, the rest of the tracks would more than suffice those who seek a more profound tone of storytelling. The record may begin as any other pop girls’ debuts do—wide-eyed, whirlwind, juvenile romance; self-love; and “young lust, let’s go,” as she would put it. But it’s as if the “Lost & Found” interlude divided Addison into two distinct yet interconnected acts, and the subsequent tracks are where Rae’s story matures.

She earnestly lays bare her polarizing wrest with fame, juggling adolescent girlhood with being a woman in the spotlight—how ephemeral, fleeting, and curated her life has become under the internet’s watchful gaze, so much so that she cries “only in the rain”. This second half is where her unique voice as a songwriter truly shines, found through a pondering self-reflection of performative femininity, grappling with the demands of the public eye, and confusion. But her confidence has always outshone the barrage of hate; after all, her facade is “turning tears into gold” and her forte is “I live for the appeal”.

By way of another interlude, “Life’s No Fun Through Clear Waters”, “Headphones On” acts almost as the record’s epilogue, tying all the central themes of her public and personal life in a neat bow, unafraid to be messy, pretty, sensual, dramatic, optimistic, pessimistic—all at once.

For a record churned from “a deep desperation and desire to understand myself better,” Addison peeled away enough layers to reveal Rae’s ethos, aesthetics, and trajectory as a more serious artist who abandons the shell of her TikTok self. It’s equally silly and serious, earnest yet campy, robust without being highbrow—all things that make her music pop.