Addison Rae

• 1. Introduction

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  In October 2025, Addison Rae walked onto the stage of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon wearing a sparkling gold gown. The burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee had first worn that gown in the 1950s. Rae put it on to sing "Diet Pepsi", the song that had turned her from an internet star into a pop singer. She is an American singer, actress and social media personality. For years the public knew her mainly for dance videos on a phone app. How did a dancer from a small Louisiana city become someone the music world took seriously? What did she risk when a batch of her songs leaked before release? And what does she say about being misunderstood by the people who watched her most closely?

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• 2. Dance Floor to TikTok

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  Addison Rae Easterling was born on the 6th of October 2000 and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana. Her parents are Monty Lopez and Sheri Easterling. She has two younger brothers, Enzo and Lucas Lopez, and an older half-sister, Macye Neumeyer, who has two daughters. Through her father she has Mexican, Cajun French and English ancestry, and her paternal grandfather's Mexican descent makes her one-quarter Mexican.

  In 2017 her parents remarried after years of splitting up and reuniting through her childhood. They divorced again in 2022.

  At the age of six, Rae began dancing competitively, and she traveled to competitions across the country. She later enrolled at Louisiana State University, where she studied broadcast journalism in the fall with the aim of becoming a sports broadcaster. She dropped out as her popularity on TikTok grew. She explained the move to Elle magazine: "a few people in LA reached out to me, and I was like 'I need to go. I need to go.' So my parents supported me fully."

  Rae joined TikTok in July 2019 and posted dance videos set to trending songs. Within a few months she had passed one million followers. In December 2019 she joined the TikTok collective The Hype House, though only for a short time. In January 2020 she signed with the talent agency WME. That July she launched a weekly, Spotify-exclusive podcast with her mother, called Mama Knows Best, about their personal and professional lives. She later relaunched the show as That Was Fun? By May 2026 her TikTok following had climbed past 88 million.

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• 3. Business and Film

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  In 2020, Rae co-founded Item Beauty, a cosmetics and skincare brand that was discontinued by 2023. In 2021 she started Addison Rae Fragrance, which offered several water-based, alcohol-free scents. A year later she partnered with Alani Nu on an energy drink flavor named Berry Pop. She has also worked with Pandora, in a collaboration with Charli XCX, as well as L'Oreal, Lululemon, Reebok and YSL Beauty. Her estimated net worth is $25 million, and she earned over $5 million in 2020. In November 2022 she even appeared for a limited time as a playable character in the mobile game War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.

  Fashion deals followed her move into music. In November 2024 she became the face of a Y2K-inspired bag, the Marc Jacobs x Vaquera collaboration, made for Marc Jacobs' 40th anniversary. When her debut album came out, she teamed with Matchaful in New York City on a drink called "Summer Forever", handed to the first 50 guests in line. In August 2025 she announced a partnership with Lucky Brand, which began with the Addison Ultra Low Rise Flare, a style inspired by early 2000s fashion. She had already worn the jeans on stage before the launch. The two sides said they wanted to "bring back the Y2K aesthetic with the goal of turning low-rise skeptics into believers." In March 2026 they added the Addison Ultra Low Short.

  On screen, Rae had voiced Marnie in the English dub of Spy Cat in 2020. In August 2021 she made her feature film debut as Padgett in the Netflix comedy He's All That, a remake of the 1999 teen comedy She's All That. It was the most streamed film during its release week. In February 2022 it was announced that she had joined Fashionista, a film produced by Paramount. In November 2023 she played Gaby in the slasher film Thanksgiving. She later appeared as Evelyn Hartley in the third season of Netflix's anthology series Monster: The Ed Gein Story.

  In November 2024, Rae starred in As Time Goes By, a short film for Saint Laurent directed by Nadia Lee Cohen. Chloe Sevigny, Joey King and John Waters appeared alongside her. Her next major role is in Animal Friends, a live-action animated road comedy with Ryan Reynolds and Aubrey Plaza, set for release on the 22nd of January 2027.

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• 4. Leak and Reinvention

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  In March 2021, Rae released her first single, "Obsessed", with a video directed by Diane Martel. The song was meant to lead an upcoming project, but that project was temporarily shelved.

  In February 2022, several songs from the unreleased EP leaked on YouTube. Rae initially thought the leak "could mark the death knell for her music career." Instead the tracks gained traction online, and that response pushed her to release the EP. AR came out on the 18th of August 2023 and drew generally positive reviews. It debuted at number 19 on the US Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart.

  In March 2024, Rae appeared on Charli XCX's remix of "Von Dutch", which landed on the remix album Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat. She also joined Charli XCX on "Lucifer", a track on A. G. Cook's 2024 album Britpop.

  In August 2024, after signing with Columbia Records, she released "Diet Pepsi", her first major-label single. Critics praised it. It peaked at number 54 on the US Billboard Hot 100, her first entry on that chart. She performed it at Madison Square Garden with Troye Sivan and Charli XCX on the Sweat tour. In October 2024 she followed it with "Aquamarine", and a remix featuring Arca arrived a month later. The Recording Industry Association of America eventually certified "Diet Pepsi" platinum.

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• 5. The Addison Year

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  In February 2025, Rae released the single "High Fashion" with a music video, and she then appeared on the cover of Vogue France. In April she took the stage at Coachella with Arca to perform "Aquamarine / Arcamarine".

  Her debut studio album, Addison, arrived on the 6th of June 2025. Two more singles, "Headphones On" and "Fame Is a Gun", had come before it. The album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200. It sold 48,500 album-equivalent units in its first week, made up of 23,000 pure album sales and 25,500 streaming equivalent units drawn from 33 million streams. She marked the release with a live concert at The Box in New York City, produced in partnership with Spotify.

  From August through November 2025, Rae ran her first headlining trek, The Addison Tour, with dates in Europe, North America and Australia. She also supported Lana Del Rey on a UK and Ireland tour that year. The Grammy Museum invited her to a spotlight event in August 2025 and asked her back for another audience event in October.

  In November 2025, Rae was nominated for Best New Artist at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards. At the ceremony she sang "Fame Is a Gun" in a medley with the other nominees in that category. In December, The Guardian named her artist of the year, while The Washington Post and The Fader each named Addison the best album of 2025. In January 2026 she performed at Spotify's Best New Artist Party. In March 2026 she played the Lollapalooza festivals in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. In April 2026 she played the main stage at Coachella and brought out Maddie Ziegler and Olivia Rodrigo as guests. That same month she also appeared at a surprise performance by Madonna in West Hollywood.

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• 6. Sound and Style

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  Rae has called her earliest music "messy". Jaime Rodriguez of Gold Derby wrote that she "managed to reset the narrative" and established herself as a "legit music artist". After 2021 she moved toward synth-pop and electropop. Rodriguez credited the change partly to her "nonexistent presence on social media" and partly to her ties with artists such as Charli XCX and Lana Del Rey.

  Larisha Paul of Vogue pointed to Rae's unexpectedly wide taste. It reaches from FKA Twigs, Yves Tumor and Kelela to avant-garde hip-hop and the Timbaland-produced R&B of the 2000s. Paul argued that this taste was key to her success. In a trailer video for Addison, Rae herself said she is "not the same person you used to know."

  The look matters as much as the sound. Rae favors a 1990s and Y2K aesthetic with highly saturated photoshoots. Her debut album's cover was described as an homage to Y2K It girls, including Hilary Duff and Christina Aguilera. She told W magazine that she brought a binder of printed photos, colors and words to her first meeting with Columbia Records. The album, she said, "existed purely as a collection of visions, visuals, and words". Felicity Martin of The Independent wrote that her music "balances pop, past and present but never feels too try-hard".

  Talking to Mel Ottenberg, editor-in-chief of Interview magazine, Rae described her influences this way: "I love a woman who does it all … I love a girl that does it all with no filter, it's just ingrained in me." Britney Spears is the name she returns to, calling her one of her biggest influences and a "huge part of her life". Writers have compared Rae's "breathy" vocals to Spears'. She also names Charli XCX, Madonna and Barbra Streisand. PAPER Magazine placed Rae and Spears together on its list of music mothers and daughters.

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• 7. Public Voice

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  In March 2020, the Australian rapper the Kid Laroi released a song titled "Addison Rae", and it went viral. Rae then appeared in Lil Mosey's video for "Blueberry Faygo". Later that year Lil Yachty mentioned her on his song "E-ER", which set off a feud with her then-boyfriend, Bryce Hall. Rae also appeared in a Nerds Gummy Clusters commercial during Super Bowl LVIII. For Super Bowl LX, she joined Bradley Cooper and Matthew McConaughey in an Uber Eats ad that featured Diet Pepsi.

  Several trends have been traced back to her. Alongside Ice Spice and Billie Eilish, she has been credited with reviving the navel piercing in the 2020s. She has also been linked to renewed interest in wired headphones and in Y2K-influenced fashion. Her covers include Glamour, Rolling Stone, Vogue France, Elle, Billboard and W. The purple outfit she wore for her 2026 Grammys performance is on show in the Grammy Museum's "On The Red Carpet" exhibit.

  In January 2021, Rae gave away the $1 million she won at an all-star Mario Tennis Aces tournament, the Stay At Home Slam, to the charity No Kid Hungry. In January 2022 she joined a campaign for the American Cancer Society. In April 2025 she wore a viral t-shirt supporting trans rights, alongside Troye Sivan and Pedro Pascal, and it raised tens of thousands of dollars for a nonprofit serving the trans community. The next month she signed a full-page Planned Parenthood ad. In June she backed protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, writing on Instagram, "This country could not exist without immigrants."

  Rae endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. In a 2025 Vogue France interview she said Donald Trump had "created the problem" of the TikTok ban in the United States. She added that it was "unbelievable to see how quickly one can abuse a newly acquired power."

  In April 2026, Rae filed a copyright claim against the US Department of Homeland Security. Her song "Diet Pepsi" had appeared in an ICE recruitment video posted on X. The video came down after "a report from the copyright owner."

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• 8. Privacy and Evolution

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  In October 2020, Rae confirmed she was in a relationship with the social media personality Bryce Hall. They ended it the following year. In June 2021 she was reported to be dating Omer Fedi, a Los Angeles musician and producer. They separated around October 2025 after four years together. Reports said the split was amicable and that she chose to focus on her career.

  In 2024, Rae named the most underrated thing about herself: her "ability to evolve and transform." She also addressed the idea that her image was manufactured: "People like to say, "Her PR team is working overtime on the rebrand." And I'm like, "Girl, nobody's rebranding. This is me.""

  In 2025, she spoke about stepping back from social media. She said she had "felt so misunderstood" after "sharing so much" of herself online. "Privacy becomes really important over time," she noted. She called being misunderstood "definitely annoying" but said she had learned not to take criticism personally. She traced that attitude to her move to Los Angeles at 19, when she was still "figuring out who she was". Her debut album, released under her own name, came after that search.

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