- 2025-06-12
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MUSIC
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Addison Rae Releases Debut Album “Addison”
American singer-songwriter Addison Rae released her debut album “Addison” along with a new music video for “Times Like These” on June 6, 2025 via Columbia Records.
The album comprises 12 tracks, produced by ELVIRA and Luka Kloser.
All tracks are written by Addison Rae, Elvira Anderfjärd, and Luka Kloser; “Lost & Found” and “High Fashion” were additionally written with Tove Burman.
The accompanying video was directed by Ethan James Green, who also shot the album's artwork, the video marks his directorial debut in music.
Addison Rae said of the album, “I've been thinking about everything that has lead me to this moment... the ups, downs, & arounds have all contributed to this album. I wouldn't change a thing. In a way, I've been working on this album for 24 years. I love the entirety of this project with all of me. A mirror. A deep desperation and desire to understand myself better. A true collection of my proudest work yet. My dream cover. My dream collaborators.”- She continued, “This is my most personal and intimate possession. Making music is vulnerable, energetically sensitive, electric, gratifying, challenging... pure magic. I am unbelievably proud. I am looking up to the sky with fingers interlaced.. lucky. Everyone who was and is involved in this project is a genius. Thank you to my beloved friends and fans for sharing this moment in time with me. I love you. I hope you dance and lose yourself to the music. Feel free. Be fearless.”
- Addison Rae told Zane Lowe of Apple Music about the album, “Once you start playing it safe, feeling like, 'Okay, I'm going to respond with what people want,' you lose all your freedom. You lose all desire for the whole purpose of starting it, and feeling like it's a form of expression and a reflection. It's more scary to let that go and give people exactly what they think they want.”
She added, “Let yourself play. Let yourself have fun, let yourself mess up. I'm not saying, 'All right, this is the real me now.' No-it's always been the real me, and those experiences have completely guided and shaped me to where I am now. It is about arrival-arrival to who I feel like I've become, and who has experienced all these ups and downs, to now land here, in this person that I am now.”
Addison Rae explained some tracks for the album.
“New York” via Apple Music
“No ['New York' wasn't done in New York City], but that makes sense right? Because then I obviously had a great experience in New York and then I came home. Of course it wasn't written in New York but the concept started there. It's like the fantasy of it all.”
“Diet Pepsi” via Vogue
“I wrote this song with two of my girlfriends. We just hit it off and made this the day we met. It was a really special energy. It's very rare to have female producers in a room, and they're both incredible. Initially the song was called 'Backseat,' and I say that in the song a lot more than I say 'Diet Pepsi.' [Laughs.] But that weekend we went to the Boiler Room for Charli's set, and I played it for her, and she told I should call it 'Diet Pepsi.' I trust Charli, she's always been so real to me and the best big sister in the industry. I was like, Well, I love Diet Pepsi. We're doing it.”
“Money is Everything” via Popcast
“I mean it was scary [being in Sweden]. I was like I've never been here, I don't know what to expect. I definitely didn't feel much pressure at the time, I think I was kind of going into it pretty softly and feeling like, 'Okay, well, whatever happens is going to happen and I'm just with the girls that I wrote the first song with that I really loved and let's see what happens,' and then we ended up writing the song that comes after 'Diet Pepsi' on the album. The second song we wrote, which is a little bit more of a satirical song, I mean if this is out, it's 'Money is Everything,' and that one's kind of crazy and silly and we completely took a 360 from what 'Diet Pepsi' was and I think the goal is to kind of teeter back and forth in these worlds that always feel like there's no pressure to match something.”
“Aquamarine” via Harper's Bazaar
“'Diet Pepsi' was always going to be the first thing I dropped. This one only felt right to follow up… I think it's very different from 'Diet Pepsi,' but also in the same universe. And I think that was really essential—that it felt very cohesive and it can exist in the same world.
This song is about transforming and finding what message you want to tell and what story you want to tell through your life.”
“Fame is a Gun” via Apple Music
“'Fame is a Gun,' that was the only song we did in New York other than 'Life's No Fun,' which is just an interlude, and for 'Fame,' there was a lot of weird intensity in that moment. We were working at Jungle City and Ariana was working there around that time too for the deluxe that she had put out, she had came down and said, 'Hey,' to us and was so sweet, she's such a sweet person and she came and chatted with us and we were really struggling at that point to keep writing, so, for 'Fame,' we were like, 'We need something uptempo and sexy and a little dark,' and this progressively got darker as we went on. We had written some weird other version of the hook lyrically and I was essentially like, 'Yeah, I'm gonna give the label what they want, which is just a straight pop song,' like that was the structure idea was like, 'I'm just going to give them what they want,' and so we wrote lyrics that were really wild and just like, 'Is this what you want? This kind of pop song?' And it was so cheesy and so corny now that I look back on it 'cause we were just so annoyed, but totally just calling people out by names there are demos that exist like that too and it is really funny. And then we started talking about fame and we had written some other demo before that that we never finish but it was essentially about the trials and the tribulations that fame give to you and present to you and then we landed on, I don't even remember how we landed on that that final lyric of fame is the gun, but I was also really loving um the song 'Glamorous Life' by Sheila E., I love that song and I love Prince, but I loved that that concept of, yeah, I do want the glamorous life and that is what we all strive for, is this beautiful life of glitz, glamour and beauty and fame is almost the price that you pay for that life and I was trying to dive deeper into this concept of fame is a gun and it's really dangerous and you don't really know what you're doing with it when you experience it, so you are pointing it blind, and you're unsure of what is going to be destroyed by it when you're experiencing it for the first time and it's just really reckless. And so we really dove into this concept of this back and forth between the innocent side of all of it and trying to understand it and wanting it.”
“Times Like These” via Apple Music
“I think that one that one might be my favorite after 'High Fashion.' It is a completely different vibe.”
“Headphones On”
“This song is deeply connected to me in so many ways. Writing it was healing, emotional, and extremely spiritual. Every good thing comes my way. Because I choose to be good. Love 2 my girls Luka Kloser and ELVIRA for always making the safest space to channel and create magic!!”
Photo by Ethan James Green - source : Apple Music
