Addison Rae kicked off the North American leg of The Addison Tour with her performance in Austin, Texas on September 22nd, touring on her debut album, Addison.
Addison Rae has always harbored a desire for stardom, long before her current it-girl persona emerged. Through her time striving for LSU Tiger Girls membership, her TikTok dancing career, and her teen rom-com acting role, Rae demonstrated a devotion to success through any means necessary–a drive that led Rae to achieve the means for personal artistic expression and to develop the persona currently being showcased on her worldwide, sold out tour: The Addison Tour.
Rae’s debut album, Addison, first offers an array of vague adages. On “Diet Pepsi,” she proposes to, “Break all the rules / ‘till we get caught,” “Summer Forever” inevitably suggests that Rae’s life, “Feels like summer forever,” and on “Fame is a Gun,” Rae emphasizes that love is indeed a drug, and one that she, “can’t deny.” The most repeated words on Addison include love, feel, cry, free, fun, and baby– themes almost comically reminiscent of universal pop lyrics.
Such overdone aphorisms could easily tank any pop artist’s it-factor–the core tenant of pop requires defined, aspirational, and provocative imagery. And not only does Addison heavily recite common phrasings, but also undeniably connects to the work of other pop artists. Rae overtly sings of money, sex, and glamour in a manner referential to Lana Del Rey’s work, while her bubblier themes of youth and innocence conjure visions of Britney Spears. This referential quality–Rae’s indistinct and heavy handed moviestarlet imitation–is what cements Addison as a notable and longstanding commentary on popstardom and an image of glamour at large.
Rae combines common lyricism with fresh sounds, skillful performance, and a bubbly persona unrivaled by any of her contemporaries. Her particular combination of unpretentious optimism and luxurious stardom, over-the-top visuals and polished dancing turns Addison from generic pop to cultural commentary. Addison functions as an amalgamation of pop’s greatest qualities: sexy, overwrought, moody, sultry, relatable, cheerful, and culturally rich. Simultaneously, Rae serves as the ideal presenter–a driven woman with a journey from mass-market social media dancer to bonafide popstar. Rae is the image of an artist perfectly imitating popstardom, and in this way, her lyrics feel genuine, meaningful, and relatable.
While Addison stands its own sonically, Rae’s artistically poignant music videography seriously increases the depth and intrigue of Rae’s debut album run. Rae created a tight visual world for Addison–a cinematic world which demands a high standard for The Addison Tour to enmesh with. Prior to The Addison Tour, Rae had only made a short series of public appearances–a Grammy Museum event, two nights opening for Lana Del Rey, an album release party at The Box nightclub, and festival appearances with collaborators Charli XCX and Arca. Rae’s night in Austin, Texas marked the ninth performance of The Addison Tour, and the first North American date.
Opening with “Fame is a Gun,” Rae and her four fellow dancers set a tone of theatrical performance, alternating between synched choreography and enacted scenes. This performance style continued through the one hour show, as Rae performed all ten songs and two interludes from Addison, and three tracks from her debut EP, AR. For song two, “I Got It Bad,” Rae changed into a Madonna-adjacement leather set and conductor hat and performed a detailed dance routine, which continued into “New York,” as she traveled around the stage on a commercial rolling ladder.
Halfway through the show, Rae invited two fans onstage to perform her iconic scream from Charli XCX’s “Von Dutch.” After three more outfit changes, a series of strobe lights, and a confetti cannon with million dollar Addison Rae bills, Rae closed the show with “Diet Pepsi,” and thanked fans for their support of her debut tour.
Building from a year of anticipation, The Addison Tour in some ways lacks the charisma of Rae’s previous performance pop-ups. Her crowd interactions feel slightly forced and her vocal performance doesn’t quite compare to that on the album. However, Rae’s Austin date saw a sold-out venue of screaming fans and a perfectly polished dance performance–all less than twenty performances into her career and mere months after the release of her debut album. Rather than refining her stagecraft in clubs and local venues, Addison Rae is developing in front of sold-out crowds on a major tour, because where else would the perfect imitation of popstardom be?
I’m an writer and photographer currently studying Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Some of my favorite artists are Arctic Monkeys, Faye Webster, and Doja Cat. I take photos and write with Austin Underground of TSTV, and I love creating media with local zines. In my free time, I like to cook, play pickleball, and have picnics with friends.
