A few years ago, when Addison Rae walked into a meeting with Columbia Records CEO Ron Perry, the TikTok sensation didn’t have any songs to play. And yet, she ended up with a record deal all the same. “I just mood-boarded my vibes,” Rae told Rolling Stone in her February 2025 cover story. “I literally had no music to play him at that point, so it was about trust. Like, ‘Yes, I’m in the clouds, and I enjoy being there. But I’m also serious.’”
Around the same time, some text exchanges with mentor Charli XCX eventually morphed into studio sessions. The pair collaborated on the early Rae single “2 Die 4” and the A.G. Cook-assisted “Von Dutch” remix from Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat. “[Charli] respected me and my ideas,” Rae said. “It was the first time I really took the step on my own to be confident in the ideas I had and follow that. I owe that all to Charli.”
Rae received similar guidance from Max Martin while working out of the MxM Music offices in Sweden. While they aren’t collaborating directly, her primary collaborators — songwriters Luka Kloser and Elvira Anderfjärd — are signed to the Martin’s publishing company. “I had told him I struggle with talking about things that are really close to me,” Rae recalled. “He’s like, ‘The only way you’re going to really push yourself [is] to say things that are true and real. Once you spill it out, you can always take it down, but if you start shallow, it’s hard to bump it up.’”
Rae has co-written every song on her album with Kloser and Anderfjärd. When she first started chipping away at it, she stuck to small sessions with a single producer. It’s how she pushed herself to listen to her gut and rely on her own instincts. “We were both shocked [that] her taste leaned very left and underground at times,” Kloser said.
The record is currently untitled and incomplete, but coming together between sessions in L.A., New York, and Sweden. The spirit of pop from all three cities has made its way into its DNA. Cruising in her black Range Rover, Rae previewed a few songs for Rolling Stone’s Brittany Spanos. They’ll join her growing discography, which currently features the standout singles “Diet Pepsi” and “Aquamarine,” and the certified flop “Obsessed.” (“I still think that song’s good,” Rae notes.)
“What she shares are hypnotic, trance-like pop songs, pulsating and lush, which will no doubt accomplish the primary goal of Rae and her collaborators: to make people dance,” Spanos writes. “The lyrics are threaded with images of a life that’s young, fun, and free: being naked on a beach, flying to Paris on a whim, being drunk at a bar. There’s no ego or self-seriousness.”
Rae has no interest in replicating the sad-girl bedroom pop that used to be the bread and butter of TikTok, the app that launched her career. “I really struggle with being like, ‘All right, time to be sad and have just a guitar on the song,’” she said.
Almost every song would begin with Rae sharing a mood board with Kloser and Anderfjärd. For Rae, mood boards aren’t exclusively reserved for new-year manifestations. Her approach is more three-dimensional, drawing on everything from vintage magazine archives and glamorous couture to text exchanges with Charli XCX. For the album, the mood board calls for disco balls, not balled up Kleenex. She closes out one song declaring, “I’m the richest girl in the world!” On another, the upcoming single “High Fashion,” she quips: “I don’t need your drugs/I’d rather get high fashion.” That board was all Marilyn Monroe and killer shoes.
“With Addison, it can come down to a rock she saw,” Kloser added. “She’ll bring up a specific tree and say, ‘This is what “Diet Pepsi” feels like.’ And if Addison Rae says that tree is ‘Diet Pepsi,’ that tree is ‘Diet Pepsi.’”