album reviews: addison rae / tate mcrae / pinkpantheress
"the rise of tiktok pop"
note from antiart
I’ve been running this page for almost five years, and the biggest challenge for me has been balancing my love for writing full-length album reviews with a steady decline in interest for well…full-length album reviews. It’s been a little disheartening, and I’ve gladly adapted by sneaking album reviews into my snarky posts or just covering albums anyway. However, this often results in me being captured by my audience and only covering records that everyone wants to hear about. To me, that’s antithetical to the whole point of a music blog, which is curating and recommending dope music that people might not know about. So, after a three-month hiatus, I’ve found a compromise.
Each week, I will choose a headliner album. That is, the most popular, memed or anticipated record of a specific genre. In addition to reviewing that, I’ll include two or three other records from this year that are similar but not talked about as much at the moment. This week, the category is “TikTok Pop”, to celebrate TikTok dancer-turned-popstar debut of Addison Rae, entitled Addison. The two extra albums that featured are from Tate McRae and PinkPanthress, I’ll be honest and say I definitely liked one way more than the other, but I won’t spoil anything. Enjoy! Like! Subscribe! Leave a comment! Appreciate you!
-Ryan
artist: addison rae
album: addison
grade: D+
Whether you like it or not, Addison Rae is at the perfect point in her career to make a pop star pivot. She has over 120 million followers across TikTok and Instagram, has gained the admiration and mentorship of Charli XCX, and has been professionally modeling for years. She’s also a pretty avid music fan, with her eclectic Spotify activity being memed in niche online spaces. She was even blessed with a rare — but kind of underwhelming — Arca remix last year for her song “Aquamarine” (they called it “Arcamarine,” of course). She has a good reputation in multiple industries, she’s highly marketable, and her breakout hit “Diet Pepsi” was extremely well-received. Pitchfork gave it a top 20 spot on their 2024 year-end singles list, calling Rae a “genuine ascendant pop star.” All the ingredients are there — what could go wrong?
Well, a lot actually. Even while praising her song, Pitchfork spent most of that review comparing her to Lana Del Rey. Maybe all these other outlets are cool with big-upping artists clearly taking all their ideas from better ones, but that shit just doesn’t fly with me. “Summer Forever” reminds me so much of Lana that I have to stop midway and put on “High By The Beach” instead. In the age of instant access, I don’t get why artists are still doing “their version” of their faves. Addison, as a debut, feels less like a coming-out party and more like karaoke night. It has flashes of brilliance — usually when she actually sounds like herself — yet that’s just not how it is most of the time. “New York” plays like a brat throwaway, from the high BPM beat to the Bowery Hotel references. “Headphones On” takes cues from Homogenic-era Björk, but “Put my headphones on / Listen to my favorite song” is elementary school poetry. Plus, it doesn’t help that the entire concept is just about her listening to better music that what we’re listening to. “Money Is Everything” is vapid, cringe, and honestly sounds like something Camila Cabello would've done on C,XOXO.
Vocally, she doesn’t push herself. It's either whisper-singing or some thin falsetto. It works on a few singles, but across a whole record it’s a little hard to listen to. Charli might have a similar range, but she’s developed her voice and plays with autotune in a way that works. If Addison’s going to bite ‘90s pop with the Britney-coded “Diet Pepsi” concept, she needs to bring that kind of vocal conviction to all these cuts. Lyrically, it’s just as rough. “I don’t want your drugs, I want to get high fashion” is a bad concept. The line about writing her name on her lover’s chest with lipstick from “Diet Pepsi” sounds like something written by Swedish-songwriting AI. “Roll one with Lana / Get high with Gaga” is yet another example of the eye-rolling lines that pop up throughout.
The record is a D+ because I think it’s listenable and has a few standout tracks. “Aquamarine” and “Fame Is A Gun” lay down the blueprint she should stick with — both have gorgeous indietronica-influenced beats and exciting vocal moments. “Aquamarine”’s bridge (“give me oOoOo”) is hypnotic and memorable. On those tracks, she actually sounds confident and original, and her producer Luka Kloser and writer Elvira Anderfjärd are the real MVPs. Even if some lyrics still need work, there’s something there. “Times Like These” has an interesting slow, reflective trip-hop kind of vibe to it that really matches what the cover was going for. “Diet Pepsi” isn’t my favorite, but it was clearly the hit for a reason. For a debut, it could’ve been way worse. I really enjoyed four songs and some elements of the others — it could’ve been none. This could’ve easily been a Tones and I-style catastrophe.
artist: tate mcrae
album: so close to what
grade: D/D+
Tate McRae is an artist who isn’t trying to hide what she’s doing, and I can respect her for that. The goal of the music is to be listenable, playlist-able, and super repetitive. On “Greenlight,” she even sings, “stuck up in a rewrite of the same song.” The subject matter and production from track-to-track blend into one another, an earth-tone slurry of predictable drums and smooth synths. As she said in her Vogue interview, each song is packed with hooks like a “coat rack filled with them.” The whole album feels like spending 40 minutes shopping at H&M — probably only fully enjoyable for a young girl between 12 and 20, and good for them.
Like the Britney and Christina records of my childhood, McRae is meant to be seen as icon first, singles artist second, and album artist dead last. Back then, I never cared about deep cuts — I just wanted the hits on repeat. In 2025, with so much music out there, most people will only listen to the singles and maybe shuffle the rest at a party. It’s not different from how record labels used to market pop stars, except Tate McRae’s music feels more forgettable and derivative than, say, Fergie’s.
Seeing Ryan Tedder produce most of these songs makes sense. His work with Timbaland and focus on radio hits shapes the record’s sound, especially in percussion. “Sports car” has that late ’00s handclap vibe like a Pussycat Dolls track, while “Revolving Door” leans into vague reggaeton or Afrobeats territory. The mix of past and present pop trends is so diluted it’s hard to tell what era or style they’re copying. A few songs like “bloodonmyhands” stand out, but they seem like copies of other tracks, and artists like The Kid LAROI feel like store-brand versions of bigger names. This record doesn’t bother me, but it doesn’t impress either. I get why she’s playing Madison Square Garden early, but I won’t be going.
artist: pinkpantheress
album: fancy that
grade: B
While Addison was doing the Renegade back at the turn of the decade, PinkPantheress was cooking up catchy, bite-sized bangers that I personally couldn’t get enough of. Early singles like “Just a waste” and “Pain” boldly established her signature sample-heavy production style and her unrequited, lovelorn lyricism. Her debut mixtape, To Hell with It, still stands as one of the best pop projects of the 2020s, cleverly catering to her young audience’s attention span without compromising her style. After the massive success of “Boy’s a liar pt. 2” with Ice Spice and her debut studio record, heaven knows, Pantheress is back with another short and sweet 20-minute mixtape.
Let me first say, her innovative interpolation and sampling techniques of classic UK electronic classics still hits and continues to improve. Across the short tape, you’ll hear flips of familiar classics from Just Jack, Basement Jaxx, Groove Armada, Underworld, and I believe The Streets as well. “Girl Like Me” takes two separate Basement Jaxx classics – “Romeo” and “Always Be There” – and makes them share the space in a way I’ve never really heard an artist do before. “Stars” cleverly takes vocals from Just Jack’s “Starz in Your Eyes” to do a cutesy call-and-response; you could almost imagine a younger Pantheress signing the original into her hairbrush before school. Moments like this speak to endearing, little things in her music that flat out feel wholesome. Elsewhere, as on “Noises” she samples, then interpolates Nardo Wick singing “what the fuck is that?”, putting her art in a more adult headspace.
Lyrically, she’s sidelined her stalker-isms of her earlier work a bit in favor of more straightforward romance. “You want sex with me? Come talk to me” she proclaims on the airy-bass pumping "Tonight.” Like all of her music, its structure is infectious and catchy, like a 3-minute chorus. On “Illegal”, the chorus goes “two into one, while you’re sitting on my bed, then later on I can feel shame in my head”, it’s a tasteful way to transition to more adult content without giving up the whimsical charm of it all. The Underworld sample mixed with 2-step drums and her breathy vocalizations illustrate the nervous moments before a hookup with a new person – it’s immensely nostalgic and relatable in a way that few modern artists can pull off. The aforementioned “Stateside” is almost like a modern “American Boy”, all it’s missing is a clumsy, sex-fueled white-boy rap verse from The Dare, who excellently co-produced it. It’s a marriage of styles that I never knew I wanted, but I absolutely love it. All in all, this is another solid entry into her catalog that I’ll be listening to on repeat for the rest of 2025.
Good to have you back