Siren's Call: Addison Rae's Ode to Pop Icons in 'Aquamarine'
By Georgia Mills
Image Sourced Through Pinterest
In the Aquamarine music video, Addison Rae floats through Paris, lensed by Petra Collins, with Pat Mcgrath’s dreamgirl makeup highlighting her doe eyes, her high cheeks. She slinks in shimmery steps down cobblestone streets, splashes water in a bathtub, swims down back alleys with two cigarettes in her mouth.
Through her latest single, Rae aligns herself with the pop princesses she idolizes (Britney, Madonna). She’s a Y2K mermaid, calling back to the 2006 movie Aquamarine. The single is reminiscent of Madonna’s Mer Girl era, with references to Britney strung throughout the song (“the heart of the ocean hangs around my neck,” she chimes, in reference to Britney’s Oops, I Did It Again music video).
Aquamarine is a gorgeous reflection of these iconic artists and their seminal eras, a vivid dreamscape of Addison’s swim to the surface of success, her head bursting from the waves of the shallow bath in the music video, her smile breaking out into a smirk. She has a secret, one that she’s letting us in on: she knows that she’s a star.
Image Sourced Through Pinterest
In the video, dripping wet with glitter that reflects Collins’s signature soft use of light, hazy blues and purple hues, she doesn’t try to sing, per say, she lets the movement and the city and her smile speak for her, to illustrate her modern fairytale.
Evoking siren imagery brings her metamorphosis to life: she’s free to swim to new waters, where she can sing and dance and act, away from the cold comments and critics that live behind phone screens back on shore, who chastised her as a shallow TikTok dancer.
A Southern belle who shot to fame dancing on the app, Addison moved to LA during the pandemic and became friends with It girls and models and actresses (I saw her at brunch once, she looked impossibly perfect), bleaching her hair blonde, reading Britney’s memoir crossing the street.
Image Sourced Through Pinterest
Sirens lure you in with their charm, beauty and magic, enchanting you for their own enjoyment, to their own ends. Addison is a smart star who is playing to her strengths, singing her siren song as an ode to her own meteoric rise and her love for the women of pop who raised her. Addison may not be the next Britney Spears, because no one can be. But I guarantee that we’ll see her play Britney in the upcoming biopic. The music video’s enchanting pull lies in the element of self reflection that flirts at its edges: is she entranced by herself in the mirror when she dances behind a golden mask, or are her eyes closed? When I swim, I keep my eyes open. I suspect she does the same.
