Do not underestimate her

Grammy nominee and 'Diet Pepsi' singer Addison Rae defies low expectations with smart, stylish music

- MIKAEL WOOD

ADDISON RAE, attending a gala at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in October, first found fame with Tik Tok dances.

Addison Rae slides into a booth at Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank and orders — what else? — black coffee and a chocolate milkshake.

The singer, actor and social media personality has been on a David Lynch kick of late; this, of course, is where the late filmmaker famously came every afternoon for years to sustain himself with that order while he wrote.

“I went into a meeting the other day and mentioned that I'd watched ‘Wild at Heart’ the night before,” says Rae, who’s 25. She’s wearing tight jeans, heels and a baggy Harvard hoodie and twirls the sweatshirt’s drawstrings in her fingers as she speaks. “They were so astounded. I was like, ‘Is this not just one of the things you should know if you're in this business?’ ”

In June, Rae released her debut album, “Addison,” which she recorded in Sweden with the producers Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser. Crisp but languid, sensual yet slightly sinister, the LP sounds like Britney Spears doing Lana Del Rey (or maybe vice versa) — a smart and stylish set of aqueous electro-pop jams that keep taking slightly weirder turns than you'd expect.

“Addison” earned rave reviews and has racked up hundreds of millions of streams; the single “Diet Pepsi” alone is at more than half a billion on Spotify. For Rae, who grew up dreaming of moving to Los Angeles from her hometown of Lafayette, La., the album's success registered as another step in a showbiz journey that began with DIY dance videos she posted as a teenager on TikTok (where today she counts more than 88 million followers).