Why Singing Skills Don’t Matter in Pop Anymore : Addison Rae
Addison Rae may not be the world’s greatest singer and that’s exactly the point. Her power lies in persona, nostalgia, and a razor-sharp understanding of pop in the age of TikTok. What one critic calls a “school play” is, in fact, the future of pop stardom. When Addison Rae stepped onto the stage of the sold-out Uber Eats Hall in Berlin during her current debut world tour, not everyone was impressed. One major German newspaper dismissed her concert as “a school play.” The review noted that Rae sometimes whispered her verses, leaned on playback, and that her performance wasn’t technically perfect. But the author couldn’t resist also commenting on the fans’ outfits: short pleated skirts, corsets, eccentric tights some even showing their thongs (gasp!).
There’s probably no better way to counter that kind of criticism than with Rae’s own lyrics from Aquamarine:
“Can’t a girl just have fun?”
Because, to be fair: Addison Rae is not the most talented singer in the world. That much has to be admitted. But here’s the thing when it comes to Addison Rae and the persona she has created, that doesn’t really matter. Judging her concerts only by vocal quality misses the whole point. We live in a time where technical skills don’t count for as much as they used to in pop music. What matters today is storytelling and if you can deliver that story in a visually pleasing way, all the better in the era of social media. And this is where the 24-year-old excels.
Neon Hair, Peep-Toes, and American Dreams : The Power of Cosplaying 2000s Pop Icons
Since the release of her single Diet Pepsi in August last year, Rae has been cosplaying the late-2000s American pop icon: neon-pink hair, the American flag, peep-toe heels, and plenty of sex appeal. Just like Paris Hilton or Britney Spears in their younger years, Rae embodies the giggly, high-pitched, seemingly naïve pop girl. But make no mistake, Addison knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s transporting her fans back into their childhood years, back when they would buy magazines like Bravo just to hang posters of Justin Bieber on their bedroom walls and their biggest heartbreak was tearing the page while pulling it out (a wound that still stings to this day).
It’s not even subtle. Rae doesn’t hide her aspiration to be the new Britney Spears. Her songs reference 2000s pop, and she plants Easter eggs: like the staged paparazzi shot of her reading Britney’s memoir while walking through Beverly Hills. No 24-year-old casually reads a memoir on the street like that, it’s a calculated image. But it shows how brilliantly Rae understands the rules of media in 2025.
Yes, much of her fame today is the result of clever marketing. What often gets forgotten is that Rae’s career didn’t start with Diet Pepsi. In 2021, she released her debut single Obsessed, which flopped. Critics mocked the shallow lyrics and questioned how a “corny TikTok dancer” could seriously pursue music. Ironically, her new album Addison (note the persona-as-brand strategy) isn’t all that different musically. So what changed?
“By 2025, questioning the legitimacy of a star who rose through TikTok is simply not an interesting opinion anymore.”
The answer: the persona. Rae first rose to fame on TikTok as a dancer, but even then her moves weren’t technically groundbreaking. What worked was her aura, her energy, her lip-syncing the kind of skills that make sense in the TikTok ecosystem. By April 2020, she had 54 million followers and was among the platform’s biggest influencers. Millennials and older critics often fail to understand this: social media comes with its own codes and standards. What looks amateurish in the “real world” can be massively successful online. By 2025, questioning the legitimacy of a star who rose through TikTok is simply not an interesting opinion anymore.
Even if her concert sometimes did feel like a school play, it still worked precisely because of that. Rae doesn’t aim to be the untouchable megastar; she as a pop persona wants to be touchable. She does not just make that clear in her lyrics but in her showmanship. During her performance of Money Is Everything, she showered the crowd with dollar bills featuring her face. “Did everyone get an Addy Bill?” she asked, grinning.
What Rae has mastered is the marketing of herself as a pop persona. Reinventing your image isn’t easy when you’re already famous for something else. In Rae’s case, she flipped her “girl next door” TikTok persona into a full-blown American Dream story: from lip-syncing on an app to eating cake in the backseat of a car, and losing her innocence there, xo, let’s go. She’s the pop “It girl,” but still manages to feel approachable. And when done right, there’s nothing audiences love more than a rise-to-fame story. Or, as TikTok would put it: the satisfaction of “making the right people famous.”
Part of that relatability comes from her beauty. In an era of Ozempic, lip filler, and Botox (even among people her age), Rae feels like a counterexample. She certainly fits conventional beauty standards, but her face and body look refreshingly “normal.”
That shouldn’t be extraordinary , but in 2025, it is. For young women, Rae offers a role model who embraces that normality, and does so by showing off her body in pleated skirts, corsets, eccentric tights, and, yes, even thongs.
In the end, Addison Rae is not about vocal talent. She is about crafting a persona that resonates with her fans’ nostalgia, tells a visual story, and plays the media game better than most. Her singing skills don’t matter nearly as much as her ability to embody a character, a memory, a fantasy. And that, in today’s pop landscape, is more than enough to sell out arenas.
Love it or hate it, the world is Addison’s oyster, and if you’re lucky enough, you just might get to touch her pearl.
by Isabell Gielisch
