Capsule #101 ft. Megan Wallace

Hello!

Happy Friday my loves 🫶.

I hope you’re well, I hope the weather’s good, and I hope you have some nice weekend plans ahead.

Today’s issue is all about Addison Rae, authenticity, and what we want from our pop stars today. Plus all the usual bits: news from this week, a wonderful Hot & Not from Megan Wallace, and recs for the weekend.

I suspect Gmail users may need to click ‘read online’ in the top corner to see all the images 🥲.

Enjoy!

Holly x

P.s. If you’ve referred a friend to Capsule recently, check your inbox/spam for an email so I can send you a note and a sticker! If you can’t find it, feel free to reply to this email and I can sort it with you.

Last year, Addison Rae posted a photo to her Instagram wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “hating pop music doesn’t make you deep.”

She was preparing the ground to properly launch her pop career, and hitting back at critics of her work. And when it comes to anti-Addison sentiment, there’s a lot out there. Some recent examples:

The complaints come back to similar themes: a lack of authenticity, accusations of being an industry plant or manufactured star, and being too referential. These are really criticisms of the music industry at large, and for some, Addison represents everything they dislike about commercialised art. But I think there are more interesting conversations to be had about Addison, in terms of the conditions surrounding her ascent, the music itself, and what we want from our pop stars today.

The industry plant accusations are interesting because I would argue that there is no more 2020s route to stardom than growing (organically) on TikTok and then using that platform to spin out into whatever you actually want to do. Emma Chamberlain has a podcast and a coffee brand, Troye Sivan went from being a YouTuber to headlining festivals, and Addison Rae has a pop music career. She wasn’t cooked up in a lab and then sprung onto us, she spent years posting multiple videos a day, churning out content in hopes of building up an audience. Addison said in a recent Popcast interview that music labels used to pay her $20 to use their songs in her content, and she’d do it. She was working: learning how promote herself, learning how the music industry was pivoting, and what her audience best responded to. This is like a years-long audition with no guaranteed pay off. It’s a high-effort way of trying to make it, on public display for all to see.

The effort is significant. Addison’s Instagram bio currently says “Effort is ritual,” which neatly encapsulates her approach so far - consistently putting in the work and not hiding the fact that such an effort is being made. She’s telling us what her secret is, trying, which also sits at the core of criticism around her. Addison addressed this in a recent video with Quen Blackwell, in which she quips: “oh, she’s trying too hard… How about you try at all?”

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Why do we hate to see people try? Should success be effortless? We talk about some stars being ‘born with it’ (Beyoncé’s voice, Miley’s charisma, Rihanna’s personality), but having innate talent doesn’t land you on the Billboard Top 100. Awkward, embarrassing, TikTok-making, try-hard work is the better route, which, if it works, grants you access to the ‘cooler’ work waiting on the other side: secret album launch parties, festival slots, brand campaigns. In the case of Addison, trying hard is read as inauthentic. The criticism implies that trying to be a pop star is not a good route to becoming one, rendering you fraudulent and unoriginal.

But here’s the big twist: Addison is not trying to be “authentic,” or at least not in the way most of us interpret that word (honest, relatable). She’s singing about the glamorous side of fame. She’s wearing diamanté showgirl sets. She’s being papped in slogan tees. Her album purposely sounds like Britney, Madonna, Lana Del Rey, and Hilary Duff. On ‘Money is Everything,’ Addison tells us exactly who she wants to be associated with:

Addison’s debut is not the story of a humble start in life or the trials and tribulations of being a young woman in America. It’s her desire to show up as a pop star. As Charli xcx told Rolling Stone earlier this year:

The world Addison is building is not made for everyone. Trying to be a pop star is something 99% of us cannot relate to. But that’s the charm of her universe, it’s a place to dream, wonder, and escape. The original name for the album was “Moodboards,” which explains it well, like a Pinterest for a dream life. Addison is prioritising escapism rather than relatability, which is something we’re seeing more of in culture at the moment. Vogue Business published an article earlier this year on “Why escapism is the new marketing currency,” pointing to all the brands embracing fantasy, spectacle and world-building to captivate audiences.

Is Addison a recession indicator then? Maybe, but she’s also just a nascent star trying to learn from her idols. In response to criticism around her authenticity, she says “we’re all putting on a show, aren’t we?” I think about similar criticism surrounding Dua Lipa. People often wish her lyrics were less vague, that we got closer to the “real her” through her music. Yet on the flip side of that is a star who might just have more longevity for holding something back.

The most relatable or “authentic” parts of Addison’s world are the most overlooked bits. Like the fact that throughout her debut album, she often refers to her parents. In ‘Headphones On,’ she sings “Wish my mom and dad could've been in lovе,” in ‘Money is Everything’ she says “When I was growing up / Mama always told me to save my money,” and on ‘Summer Forever’ Addison knows “Loving's hard, my parents said it.” These references to her parents are sweet, tender, a symbol of her youth. They also represent a specific turning point in her life, transitioning from her role as a daughter towards building a new world for herself. There’s vulnerability in realising that career-building adulthood is in full swing, especially when this new world looks different to the one your parents grew up in.

Addison as an album is a 24-year-old woman realising she’s out on her own, knowing that she can take the lessons from her parents with her, but that ultimately it’s time to forge her own path. That essence of the unknown is felt throughout the album through images of forward motion, pushing to reach something on the other side. In ‘Diet Pepsi’ she’s on the move: “When we drive in your car, I'm your baby,” in ‘Summer Forever’ she’s on the road again, with “All my fеars thrown out the window” and in ‘Times Like These,’ we get Addison’s strongest moment of reaching forwards:

She has a vision board informed by her idols and childhood dreams, but she doesn’t really know where she’s going. She knows life is changing rapidly, “My life moves faster than me / can’t feel the ground beneath my feet,” she sings on ‘Times Like These.’ But despite all the uncertainty, she’s doing well, great even, because it feels good in the moment. Addison may not have delivered us a tortured artist or outcast story, but it has provided a blueprint for how to enjoy the moment even as you step into the unknown. What more do we need from pop?

And finally…

News from the Capsule universe this week:

• Rhode cleverly chose Harris Dickinson to help them sell water

• Hayley Williams and St Vincent are on the new David Byrne album

• Sabrina Carpenter is putting out a new album just one year after Short n Sweet. The discussion points are 1) the cover, and 2) the career playbook:

• And more Sabrina news: a nude Rolling Stone cover

• Dua Lipa properly confirmed her engagement to Vogue

• France is making moves to reduce the impact of fast fashion

• Last week, a surprise Lorde event in London. This week, a surprise Addison performance in Soho

• And since Lorde and Addison Rae are both in London… is the Charli xcx show tomorrow about to be a big one? I hope so!

• And could Lorde do the double…?

This week, Megan Wallace popped into Capsule to share what’s 🔥hot🔥 and what’s not 🙅‍♀️ …

Megan (they/them) is a writer, editor and hot person from Scotland. They're the co-founder of erotic zine PULP and write about all things sexy for the likes of Cosmopolitan and British Vogue. Right now, they work in queer media as the Editorial Director of Gay Times, the longest-running LGBTQ+ publication in Europe. Follow their Substack at pulpzine.substack.com!

📺 Watching: The Ballad of Wallis Island in the cinema, Addison Rae on Therapuss, and the new video for ‘Psycho Killer’ by Talking Heads featuring Saoirse Ronan.

📖 Reading: These reflections on Mrs Dalloway for the 100-year anniversary from contributors at Blank, Dirt’s new literary brand. And this excellent Substack from Tara Maria Gonzalez, in which she creates five outfits inspired by the films that influenced Charli xcx’s Brat. The research and execution are so good!!! As Tara says, “The Brat uniform should be more than a tall black boot.”

I also contributed to this article about trends for the rest of 2025, which marks the first time I have been called a “fashion insider.” 👀

🎧 Listening to: Lotus, the new Little Simz album, ‘Frozen,’ Jade’s cover of the Madonna song, ‘Manchild,’ the new Sabrina Carpenter song, and I also listened to Lemonade after a long time away and highly recommend the experience.

News just in from Percy that will delight some of you and horrify others: “bandage dress” search interest is at an all-time high, and orange was the top trending colour searched. Surprised by the colour but not the general trend. For more on that, check out this from Style Analytics.

If you’d like to adopt Percy or one of his friends, click here to learn more.

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See you next week 💋

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