After years of having more relatively unknown albums take the No. 1 slot on The FADER’s year-end albums list, I initially struggled with the idea of a fairly mainstream pop record occupying that position for this list. Is it too obvious? Could it go to a more underground project? After a while, however, something that james k said in my interview with her from September kept replaying in my mind: that Addison Rae is a tragic pop star, and that’s what makes her so brilliant.
Among words like “absurd” and “dystopic,” tragic, to me, is a most ringing descriptor about life in These Times. We’re living in a country that’s decades past its golden days, taking rights away from its citizens, embracing tech efficiency over creativity, the list goes on. Addison’s album is, of course, not about these big, pressing issues. But it is about the other important work: finding a way to fully live in the face of tragedy, when it can otherwise so easily bring you down.
“Wish my mom and dad could’ve been in love,” goes the best lyric of the record from “Headphones On,” a song about tuning out your troubles to tune into the music you love; “Times Like These,” a melancholic pop blur, sounds like gazing at a rapidly changing cityscape from the backseat of a car, helpless in stopping it, resigned to accepting it. These 12 songs (made by three women, no less) capture a messy humanity of indulgence, paranoia, insecurity, and, most crucially, unashamed joy.
Is this why her music so feverishly, so unexpectedly, resonated with so many this year? It was, at least, the case for me and for so many others on The FADER’s staff. In it we saw a kind of universal truth, and chose to dance along with her. —SW
