Although Olivia Rodrigo is about three years younger than Addison Rae, it’s still fair to say that she was the one who walked so that Addison could run when it comes to lyrics about fame that are designed to be resonant to the “common people.” Because, before Rodrigo came along with 2023’s “vampire,” the lead single from her sophomore album, Guts, there was very little in the way of lyrics that sought to make the masses feel as though fame had grown as accessible as it had become by the dawn of “TikTok supremacy” circa 2020 (at least in the U.S. [where it hadn’t yet fully taken hold] and in large part thanks to the so-called lockdowns of the pandemic in said country).
But with one indelible line, “Bloodsucker/fame fucker/Bleedin’ me dry like a goddamn vampire,” Rodrigo effectively acknowledged the total deterioration of the erstwhile divide between a time when fame seemed like a once in a million shot and a time—now—when it can be achieved by essentially anyone if they happen to be in the right place and the right time (even if the internet is nowhere and adheres to no average concept of time) in order to “hit the vein” of virality. And yes, Rodrigo herself experienced a phenomenon akin to that, albeit with something distinguished, respectable—that is to say, music—in 2021, with the runaway success of her debut single, “drivers license.” Because, before that point, very few people outside of a certain niche demographic (the High School Musical: The Musical: The Series-viewing one) were aware of Rodrigo’s existence. And then, with a single that threw major shade at two fellow Disney employees, Joshua Bassett and Sabrina Carpenter (the latter, by then, being a former Disney employee), Rodrigo’s entire fame level was forever altered. Elevated.
Which is precisely why, roughly three years later (with the songwriting process for “vampire” being started in December of 2022 and finished in January of 2023), Rodrigo possessed the wisdom, so soon after reaching stratospheric heights of fame, to understand that it’s real easy to make “friends” once you hit the big time. People hoping to “glom onto your star, your talent” (to loosely quote Josie McCoy [Rachael Leigh Cook] in Josie and the Pussycats). And while the speculation as to who the main “muse” behind this hard lesson for Rodrigo was (with theories about who inspired it including everyone from exes Adam Faze and Zack Bia to none other than Rodrigo’s [perhaps former] idol, Taylor Swift) remains just that—speculation—the important part of the lyrics is Rodrigo’s meditation on what it means to be a “vampire” within the context of Hollywood. And the fact that “Hollywood,” what it represents, has been as democratized as “content creation” itself, means that anyone has motive for being “vampiric” (a.k.a. a fame fucker) in the present landscape.
Hence, although Rodrigo was initially made to feel hesitant about including the lyrics by certain people she played it for (i.e., probably friends or “executives” with no taste), she went with her, well, guts in choosing to keep the “fame fucker” diss. This despite acknowledging of the critiques against the phrase (as she mentioned on The Julia Show), “Some people said, ‘It kind of isolates you from people, you can’t really say things like that in a song, it’s not relatable,’ yada, yada, yada. I totally get and saw where they were coming from.” But she also saw (and heard) something that those naysayers didn’t: “I think the song isn’t about fame fucking, I think it’s more about someone being manipulative and sucking you dry, using you for all you’re worth. I think that’s a universal theme, and I also think fame is more easily accessible now than it has ever been. It’s not just people in L.A. and Hollywood that have to deal with that.”
Take, for example, Addison Rae, “just a small-town girl” (to use the Journeyism) from Lafayette, Louisiana—a stone’s throw (or two-hour drive), incidentally, from her doppelgänger Britney Spears’ hometown of Kentwood. A girl who managed to turn her dreams of becoming a star into reality based solely on becoming a “TikTok star.” A term that, although still gauche/cringeworthy, has essentially replaced what it once meant to be famous based on a more legitimate talent. And yet, Addison did wield her legitimate talent of dancing to get in on the ground floor of what TikTok would initially be all about (before it segued into tutorials, all things “influencer” and general brain rot “content”).
That was in 2019, with Rae building her following into the double-digit millions and then using that following to do what she really wanted: make her first foray into becoming a pop star with 2021’s “Obsessed.” Although panned by critics at the time, the song has become more vindicated of late for its self-aware sense of narcissism and kitsch—something that the likes of Charli XCX can appreciate, hence the way in which she effectively took Addison under her wing to musically mentor her, even offering to collaborate on “2 Die 4” after the demo leaked. A track that eventually appeared on her 2023 EP, AR.
With her confidence rebuilt while recording her contributions to Charli’s “von dutch” remix (telling Zane Lowe that it was thanks to XCX she felt she could trust her musical instincts and tastes again in the aftermath of the “Obsessed” debacle), Addison began working on what would become her self-titled debut with producers Elvira Anderfjärd (a.k.a. Elvira) and Luka Kloser—and yes, rightful attention was paid to the fact that Addison worked only with female producers on the record, with “Fame Is a Gun” being one of the songs to undergo the most lyrical evolution. For it wasn’t easy to strike the exact right tone in terms of the message Addison wanted to get across about herself, in essence, being a fame fucker as she sings, “There’s no mystery, I’m gonna make it, gonna go down in history/Don’t ask too many questions, God gave me the permission/And when you shame me, it makes me want it more/It makes me want it more, more.”
So it is that, in a strange, unexpected way, “AR” might very well be the sort of person Rodrigo would call out as a “bloodsucker/fame fucker.” Except that, unlike a fuckboy such as, say, Zack Bia, Rae truly does have something to offer to the spotlight, having known from a very young age that she wanted to “entertain.” And there’s still perhaps no better “360” (a Charli reference, to boot) medium for that than the platform of pop stardom. Something that Rodrigo can attest to as well. In addition, perhaps, to Addison’s take on owning up to wanting the trappings of fame (even if disdaining the kind of hangers-on who are so overtly leech-y):
“I loved that that [Sheila E] concept of, ‘Yeah, I do want the glamorous life’ and that is what we all strive for, is this beautiful life of glitz, glamor and beauty, and fame is almost the price that you pay for that life and I was trying to dive deeper into this concept of fame is a gun and it’s really dangerous and you don’t really know what you’re doing with it when you experience it, so you are pointing it blind, and you’re unsure of what is going to be destroyed by it when you’re experiencing it for the first time and it’s just really reckless.”
As reckless, even, as a fame fucker willing to do whatever is necessary to get a taste of the spotlight. Something that has never been more attainable to the hoi polloi than it is at this point in time—which is exactly why “vampire” and “Fame Is a Gun” have experienced such mainstream success with listeners who might have otherwise been “alienated” by pop stars waxing poetic about fame in a single that was released, say, in the late 90s (though “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” is an exception to the former rule). Or even Addison Rae’s (and, ultimately, Olivia Rodrigo’s, for that matter) preferred decade to pay homage to, the 2000s.
