Kyle Reviews Addison Rae’s New Drop Because We Are Nothing Without Our Stereotypes

Kyle Galloway on 18 February 2025

You know me, Reader. I was lay (boyfriend’s bed, the Cuatro Torres just visible out the window, it’s Valentine’s Day, he’s at work, God it’s so hard), thinking (slightly hungover, freshly cut hair, 3 espressos deep, dodging the cumstain on my pillow) about whether to snatch an arbitrary line from Marx’s Grundrisse or Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet to feign informed sociological analysis of Addison Rae’s new single, ‘High Fashion’, and in doing so fraudulently intellectualise the fact that I froth-at-the-mouth-rabidly support this woman’s current trajectory. I was lay (I am lay) in these sheets, and you may think this introduction promises my resignation from this formula, BUT IT DOES NOT. Self-awareness does not necessitate moral puritanism, Reader. I am nothing if not a proselyte. And I might add: if any number of novels can establish status via epigraph, then so shall I. Without further ado…. Ben Lerner’s 2014 novel (one of my all-time favourites) is preceded by the following epigraph:

“The Hassidim tell a story about the world to come that says everything there will be just as it is here. Just as our room is now, so it will be in the world to come; where our baby sleeps now, there too it will sleep in the other world. And the clothes we wear in this world, those too we will wear there. Everything will be as it is now, just a little different.”

This motif of “everything as it is now, just a little different” is echoed throughout the text, and comes to involve itself with ideas of intertextuality, representation, and authorship. To what point can anyone truly author anything, if the cultural artefact produced results from a centuries-long interpersonal means of production through which you learned the necessary skills and gleaned the necessary inspiration to be moved to make such an artefact? The Hassidic story itself is one Lerner says that he first happened upon in Agamben, but that is usually attributed to Walter Benjamin, who critics note heard it from Gershom Scholem. Maybe the sum of all things in the world-to-come, despite the new meshings of old influences and processes, is, as the story proposes, as it is now. Maybe, if we do not think of the “everything” as “every single thing” and instead visualise it as the holistic “everything of now” versus the “everything of then”, we realise that everything will indeed be as it is now, because the sum of all things will still weigh the same, in grams if not in cultural weight. All we do is reshape, remesh, rewind and press play.

Stay with me. If we suspend our disbelief, this means that, no, your housemate was not the first housemate to piss himself in Wharf Chambers. No, the Leeds Swimming Society was not the first swimming society to play soggy biscuit. And I’m sorry, I really am, but you and your friends were not the first ones to find that bench on the hill behind Meanwood Valley Farm that overlooks the city. I know someone who shat there. But even if you and your group of friends were the West Yorkshire conquistadors that you imagined, my point is none of it would be really new! The soggy biscuit would simply be the incidental next iteration of thousands of years of rancid biscuit-based tests of character. I am sure that Henry VIII was the sorest loser of soil’d bisquite that 1503 ever saw.

Circling back, though, you have likely inferred at this point that this is a setup for me to defend Addison Rae against plagiarism allegations. You wouldn’t be far off. “High Fashion”, a whisper-falsetto track that stings against a thick, layered synth instrumentation, definitely recalls “Fetish”-era Selena Gomez (2017) and Ariana Grande’s “Let Me Love You” and “Touch It” (2016). Likewise, Rae’s first and second singles from her upcoming debut pulled generously from pop of the last 20 years, with “Diet Pepsi” (2024) drawing comparison to early Lana Del Rey and “Aquamarine”’s (2024) glittery production pointing to Madonna’s Ray of Light (1998) and American Life (2003). And these are not baseless comparisons; Rae’s existing discography undeniably rehashes pop music as it has been established thus far, almost as an agenda.

But in truth, I do not find it convincing that this makes her a copycat any more than it makes her a ‘student’ of the culture. The music itself, combined with the concomitant imagery she has released alongside it, betrays (at least to me) a concerted effort to be seen making a concerted effort to be a popstar. Whether it’s the performative, almost histrionic hypersexuality in her music videos; the ill-fitting, dress-up style outfits; the brownnosing of Charli XCX; the bubblegum-blowing on the cover of her debut EP; the OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES (2018) jumper; or the stylish, eyebrowless accessory that she has made of choreographer Lexee Smith, to me this rebrand screams popstar-plays-girl-desparate-to-be-popstar. It is the ouroboros!!! And dare I say it is, for the Aquama-ra-ra bitch, a foolproof ploy.

Medidate on this. A Tiktok darling of the universally-hated “Renegade” epoch, Addison had no doubt seen the vicious reception of ‘serious’ attempts at music by her fellows (colleagues? contemporaries?) and herself (see: “Obsessed” (2021)). She (and her team, I’m sure) would have known that a transition to popstar would be no mean feat, and to circumvent this, the (I’ll say it) genius move was to make her entire brand a satirisation of her own position in the media-sphere. If she were to play the part of a wide-eyed, fame-hungry protegé of Charli and Troye Sivan, both explicitly in the kitsch, frenzy, and referentiality of her music videos and more convincingly in paid-for paparazzi shots and dazed-and-confused red carpet interviews, any negative reception she received for the awkwardness of her reorientation towards music would be suffused into the self-consciously artificial, fawning persona she had marketed. She would set up a relationship with the public in which criticism is negated and instead relegates itself to fluffing up her own polemacy, and those on either cognitive side of those who criticise (those who consume the product without any level of interrogation, and those who enjoy the art of the charade itself) will praise her relentlessly (see: me).

The proof is in the pudding – the numbers Addison is pulling right now are nothing to be sniffed at. On Spotify, “Aquamarine” sits at 32 million streams, and “Diet Pepsi” at a mammoth 292 million. Beyond this, Rae is fraternising with any number of established popstars (Lorde, Rosalía, etc.) while simultaneously gesturing at relationships with more esoteric figures such as Arca. She’s walking the tightrope well because she has erected neon billboards pointing at the tightrope and just how thin it is.

As far as I’m concerned, “High Fashion” and it’s (anything but) coke-fuelled visuals has one foot (pun intended) planted in Addison’s hallmark please-don’t-make-me-sing! kitsch and the other firmly in an ambition to innovate, through however many layers of metacommentary. Disjointed, vapid lyrics (“I know I’m drunk, but…”) poorly solder a number of pop clichés together (‘couture’, libido, uppers, exhibitionism). They make the track fodder for off-the-bat criticism à la Artpop (2014), but the poor lyrical execution is juxtaposed against an unexpectedly complex, hazy instrumental which weaves in and out of the vocal performance and, during drops, cracks open into EDM-adjacent texture. The track’s video, too, plays with garish colour, visual allusion, and forced perspective, meshing together images of Addison as a chalk-covered gymnast, Oz’s Dorothy, and a closet fashionista literally playing dress up. It’s frenetic, but it’s notably more thought-out than the lyrics. The work put into the track’s music video and production problematise an assessment of the lyrics that dismisses them as thoughtless or manufactured.

For if ‘manufactured’ is the intention, what is the logic behind it? Stirring controversy for publicity? Or holding a mirror up to the pop that we’ve been listening to uncritically for the last couple of decades? If Addison, the total newcomer to ‘serious’ art, she who is easiest to critique, decides to gut her lyrics of meaning, does this not reinscribe the words sung with words implied? Words that ask us how deep the lyrics of pop we admit as enjoyable actually are. The song she has produced, whether or not its lyricism is justified by the modalities attached to it, is just as the songs we accept are, but a little different. A little different in source, a little different in frankness regarding influences, a little different in its relationship with sincerity. But by writing a mirror instead of an image itself, this music encourages us to review what we consider good or original art, our acceptance of a world-to-come that does not invent its meaning machines but simply reboots them, and our own media literacy.

Written by Kyle Galloway

Kaeto’s INTRO to alt-pop stardom is just the beginning

Eszter Vida on 14 October 2024

Eszter Vida interviews London-based artist Kaeto on her debut mixtape ‘INTRO’ as she navigates us through her songwriting process, working on its visuals collaboratively and infusing different genres, as well as touring the UK with The Last Dinner Party.

O2 Academy Leeds, early autumn. The eclipsed sun sets over the tranquil sky. The air begins to bite you, turning colder by the second. The wind pulses intrusively in your hair, and the streetlights prematurely beam into the colours of a certain je ne sais quoi, only comparable to a scene from Blade Runner. Wearing my heavy blue headphones, Bob Dylan-style leather jacket with hands mimicking his Freewheelin’ album cover, I am shuffling down the hill from Hyde Park towards the city centre, until a little old me finds herself in the dressing room of O2 Academy. It was one crazy alternative way of pre-ing for the recently Mercury-nominated The Last Dinner Party’s headline tour, sharing an ephemerally short quarter of an hour with the opening act, Kaeto.

As Brat Summer fades into a distant dream, your playlists may be looking for something slightly more ambient, something more sombre, as we approach the colder months. Enter ‘Sad Girl Autumn’, a phenomenon brought to life by our generation’s self-indulgent collaging of itself through Pinterest boards and Instagram posts, but mostly for the obsessive purpose of repurposing and recycling the cultures of the past. There’s a heavy sense of this feeling attached to Kaeto’s debut mixtape INTRO, an all-embracing example of collaging and feeling through music.

The rising London-based artist recollects her memories of her school years and growing up in Leeds, using the internet as an outlet to share her passion for music before moving down to the big city, aged only 15. ‘I spent a lot of time singing in school productions and uploading videos of myself singing to YouTube’. The formative years of an artist, especially today, showcase the different experimentations of style and changes from childhood influences. ‘I did a Kelly Clarkson cover where I was moving my hands, and then everyone at school found it’. A generation defined by social media, what feels like the apocalyptic death to identity as a teenager expressing herself so early on, has since built the foundations of Kaeto’s genre-fluid style combined with elusive performance art at her live shows.

Creativity and freedom of expression becomes the core of her musical ventures, one that is aided in connecting with your surroundings. ‘We would write a lot on the rooftop amongst all these sunsets and colours in the sky.’ She says this, as she shows me souvenir snapshots of Sevillian lilac skies that acted as a studio space during her mixtape recording process earlier this year. The geographical landscape and music swiftly blend to form her aesthetic, illuminating the euphoric imagery of joy and self-reflective memory. Thanks to the intricate layers of soaring synths and low droning, there’s an element of cinema attached to the reeling quality of her songs, echoing the personal moment of an introspective train ride. ‘There’s a thing that happens to your brain when you look closely at something and disengage on a creative loop. We came away from that trip with so many more ideas than we would really, because you write in a studio.’

Both the music and visuals feel inherently interconnected, and Kaeto cites her collaborative partners who help capture her visual ideas. ‘I’ve ended up with a lot of friends who are talented cinematographers.’ This is just another layer to the importance of being part of a particular supportive hub of musicians, as she recounts the opportunity of being able to make endlessly content, amalgamating into a sort of musical treasure chest because of this networking. She speaks less about the opportunity to tour with The Last Dinner Party and more on the gratitude and excitement of forming friendship with lead singer, Abigail Morris, through the sheer coincidence of rehearsing at the same establishment. ‘First time we met we were both rehearsing in Premises, and we knew we were both going on tour together, so we sent each other messages like ‘Yay, you at Premises today?’ and we grabbed lunch together.’

Quintessential is this theme of the personal and emotion, both conveyed in her new release INTRO; a raw, expressive take on trip-hop, electronic and dance music that was born from the idea of solely making music, without thinking about making an album. Albums and the releasing of music has changed, and the music of our generation has held this collaging status, specifically as her take on genre aligns with the idea that ‘the way we consume music is no longer genre bound.’ It’s almost as if her music’s intention is achieving this boundaryless feeling, not by design. She quotes the greats like Caroline Polachek and David Byrne (Talking Heads) on how album artwork used to signal genre and how music develops in the space it is played for. So where and how exactly would you listen to Kaeto’s music if we were to apply her personal philosophy?

‘Music is a communication of emotion, and so it’s by virtue that’s what music is to me, it’s how I feel.’ The opening track ‘U R Mine’ felt very Fiona Apple in a way, the bright reverberating pianos open with a dramatic, yearnful tone to her mixtape. A lover of unusual voices, if you tried fusing the of trip-hop and shoegaze you would only be cracking the surface of her sound. We discussed our love for the latter genre as she cited some of the artists, who we both gushed over. ‘Slowdive. Anything 90s shoegaze or like The Cranberries, The Sundays, that’s my shit.’ Her vocals always feel very soft, free and playful like they do in these genres, yet she doesn’t leave you with a predictable take, with the production style being also comparable to the likes of Portishead. The mixtape later flourishes into tracks like ‘KISS ME’ and ‘CARRY YOU’ that showcase more duality and flirtation, closing with the grandiosity of a dance track like ‘YOMM’. There is a lot of heart and heavy inward introspection, but also with the desire to party and enjoy youth. She comments on this duality and the purpose of making music; ‘It’s how I enjoy myself, it’s how I indulge in my morbid sadness, it’s definitely the lens through which I experience the world.’ Feeling through music becomes intangible. ‘Sometimes a song or a sound has encapsulated how you feel in a way that there are no words attached.’ There’s no overthinking when you are being authentically yourself, something we can marvel at with Kaeto’s ethereal stage presence and bold, individualist identity as an artist.

With the recent resurgence to dance music, Kaeto’s mixtape couldn’t arrive in a timelier fashion as an alterantive, adding to the wave by infusing electronica, bedroom-pop and eclectic lo-fi sounds that you couldn’t pin down to one lonely genre as the outcome of her writing process. ‘I would love to do more concept storytelling, but at the moment the way that I write doesn’t really call for that, because I very much write what comes from my subconscious.’ There’s clearly more to come. Afterall, an INTRO is foundational to the other parts to accompany an artist’s story beyond the ephemeral horizon she has begun to paint in hypnotic colours, reeling us into her world of nostalgia and writings of self-exploration.

Chappell Roan: The Sapphic Supernova Posterchild Behind The Rise of Lesbian Pop

Maddie Nash on 11 September 2024

Maddie Nash breaks down the femininomenon of the rise (no fall) of Midwest princess Chappell Roan and how her meteoric takeover of pop music has catapulted queer representation in the mainstream media.

In recent weeks, the pop and mainstream music landscape has been dominated by a rogue: an outrageous, outspoken, lesbian drag queen from the rural Midwest. Chappell Roan’s supersonic boom into popularity that reached a speed never seen before, shifting from underground artist into superstar in a matter of months. Each time you check her Spotify listeners, the number so far stands at 45 million, compared to her humble beginnings of only 1 million. She attracted the biggest crowd Lollapalooza has ever seen, has made a guest appearance on the tour of reigning pop queen Olivia Rodrigo, and blazed into the mainstream stratosphere with a track being hailed as our generation’s ‘Y.M.C.A’.

Her rise has been completely unprecedented, especially due to the brazen lesbian content of her music. Lesbianism in pop music has exploded within the last few years, but its popularity has remained within the pretty niche confines of a queer audience. girl in red, possibly the most successful postergirl for lesbian pop thus-far, has reached great success, headlining world tours, but even she has not garnered the level of mainstream appeal enjoyed by the femininomenal Ms. Roan.

Chappell’s debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, released on the 22 September 2023, features some of her biggest hits, such as ‘Red Wine Supernova’, ‘HOT TO GO!’, and ‘Pink Pony Club’. In the eleven months since its release, many of these have gone viral online, massively boosting her popularity of her songs to 100m+ streams. Her newest single, ‘Good Luck, Babe!’, peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 2024.

Music catering to the queer community has dipped its toes into the mainstream since the advent of gaypop around the birth of disco in the 70s. The discographies of the likes of Queen, George Michael, and David Bowie all held allusions to queer lifestyles, though such references had to be (however thinly) veiled rather than spoken outright. A famous example of the censorship of queer experience from popular music was the BBC’s refusal to play ‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood on the radio in 1983, given it referred to gay sex.

Despite this, gay icons such as Freddie Mercury have since been adopted and cherished by heteronormative audiences, too, fawned upon for their campy quirks while simultaneously having their sexual identities ignored, censored, or blacklisted. Whilst with the aforementioned artists their identity and music could often be separated and thus cleansed of queerness by audiences, the unapologetic nature of Chappell Roan’s work makes that disassociation virtually impossible, as her lesbian identity is such a pillar of her art.

Up until now, there has been a glass ceiling on queer music. Despite being fervently and widely enjoyed within niche gay audiences, queer music has never competed with artists of such great mass appeal as Taylor Swift. As the experience can’t be claimed or truly understood by a heterosexual audience, it can never be truly accepted by wider, mainstream, heteronormative culture. In my opinion, Chappell Roan is the first artist to kick this ceiling in, and take explicitly lesbian music to the popularity we are currently seeing. Lesbianism historically has always been alienated, fetishised, shunned and distanced. Even when gay men become more societally digestible, lesbianism has remained taboo and beleaguered by disgust. Now, we are seeing straight girls post their boyfriends to songs about women being in love.

Seeing this was especially weird to me; an inverse of everything I am used to. These songs and lyrics spanning the highs and lows of love between women are being used as an accessible romantic symbol, one to be related to by the everyday listener. It is such an alien and exciting (femini)nomenon, that music that celebrates lesbian relationships is receiving such praise and popularity. It may signal a change in society, a willingness to listen to and resonate with music and experiences that have before been outcast, and an example for what’s to come in the future of queer artists. On the other hand, the immense speed of her climb may indicate a dangerous commercialisation of lesbian music, in which the appetite of heteronormative audiences for sapphic pop may dilute its intrinsically alternative core and accuracy to lesbian lived experiences. Regardless, this is a historic moment in music history, headlined by one of the most exciting new artists out there today!

Words by Maddie Nash