The Singles Jukebox

Our favorite kind of Pepsi? Pepsi’s Pepsi… no, just, just regular Pepsi.

[Video]
[5.69]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Thrillingly boring — like turning over a perfectly smooth stone in your hands, each pass revealing new depths. I didn’t understand Addison Rae the last time we covered her, but I’ve come to realize that it’s better if I don’t; with every line here she makes the case for herself as the ultimate anonymous pop star, using the blankness of her affect to create an undeniable pop object.
[8]

Leah Isobel: I remain a little unconvinced by Addison Rae The Popstar, moreso now that she’s displayed some surprisingly canny instincts. The post-Britney mold of non-popstar popstardom that she explored on her last EP was laser-targeted to get gay people on board (right down to the discarded early Gaga track), but it demonstrated her surprising facility with camp and irony. By contrast, the hot girl Lana redux of “Diet Pepsi” is actually harmed by its relative seriousness. To be fair, this is a song where Addison sings the line “Summer love / (Ah, ah) Sexy,” so we’re not exactly in Mitski territory. But it is also a song where those sweet whiffs of empty postmodernism have to exist within an extremely calculated whole whose primary aim is to reposition her as an artist that people feel comfortable taking seriously. As such, “Diet Pepsi” feels like a jumble of signifiers meant to read well in the marketplace, rather than cohere as a song. I see that Addison is serious about pop stardom and smart about navigating it; I don’t see that she has a particular musical perspective, beyond loving it. Which, okay, that’s relatable.
[6]

Alfred Soto: At least Lana Del Rey wrote and sang Diet Mountain Dew as if she had some acquaintance with the taste and the boy it reminded her of. Using Ariana Grande’s whisper-screech, Addison Rae sounds like she has no idea what nutritionally null tastes like — unless she means her song itself. “Break every rule” LOL.
[2]

Katherine St. Asaph: I suppose this YA version of Lana Del Rey is as likely as anything else to make people take Addison Rae’s pop pivot seriously. (I mentioned this in last month’s Stereogum column, but it’s fascinating how Lana has redefined “Americana” for a generation to mean breathy pop rather than roots music.) Kind of like how this does the truck driver’s gear shift to a lower key for no clear reason — to suit Addison’s limited vocal range, I guess, but they could have done it the other way around.
[6]

Will Adams: Same with “I Got It Bad,” Addison Rae’s lack of presence allows more attention for a track that’s not short on ideas. After two minutes of breathiness, the song delivers a post-chorus of straight gibberish, followed by backing vocals only, and then a rare key change downward, becoming its own slowed + reverb version. It’s as notable as a spritz of Febreeze.
[5]

Mark Sinker: I approached this song wanting to road-test the idea that gauzy isn’t necessarily all that sexy but then I found out that the singer’s non-stage surname is “Easterling” and now my theory is all about orcs and TikTok (which probably helps no one). 
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Luka Kloser hit challenge: still failed.
[4]

Joshua Lu: In relistening to “Obsessed,” the bones are there — a solid hook embedded in a catchy chorus, and the pop sensibilities strong enough to exploit them. The years have been kind to Rae, and “Diet Pepsi” presents a remarkably realized version of her, bringing forth a song that’s as wistful as it is sensual, beckoning like a siren across the water and burying her inability to sing under layers of reverb. It’s sort of like if 2015 Vanessa Carlton were horny on main.
[8]

Ian Mathers: The title seems like such a random choice from a nothing line that doesn’t really accomplish anything… it’s got to be a reference to how much this sounds like ersatz Lana Del Rey, right? Except “Diet Pepsi” works more effectively as a pop single than anything Lana’s done in a while. It also feels like it lacks any spark or interest outside of the perniciously catchy chorus, which I’m half sick of before I ever hear it out in the wild.
[6]

Dave Moore: Addison Rae cannibalized Taylor Swift’s cannibalization of Lana Del Rey so boldly that I have to respect it — after all, with Swift it was a big fish consuming a littler fish; this is more like watching Nibbler from Futurama swallow an alien stegosaur. 
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: The guitarist protagonist of the anime Bocchi the Rock! alternately fears and admires a genre that she calls “seishun rock”: pop songs centered on youthful adventurism in which a vibrant social and romantic life is assumed to be the norm. Her “Seishun Complex” stems from a fear that her own finite adolescence is being eaten away by the kind of debilitating anxiety that’s comical to us only because it’s fictional. “My cheeks are red like cherries in the spring” is not a reference to the cherry blossoms that are the ubiquitous Japanese symbol of beautifully fleeting youth, but it is the first of two seasonal tags in “Diet Pepsi,” with “summer love” taking up similar semantic ground in American English as seishun does in Japanese. Despite the present tense lyrics, everything about “Diet Pepsi” marks it as a window into past experience: the languid pacing, half-awake whispers, aqueous synth textures, “innocence” that can be lost only once. It shares DNA with “Teenage Dream,” especially its fetishizing of form-fitting blue jeans, but it differs in one crucial aspect: Katy was on a mission to re-enact her youthful escapades in the present, whereas Addison is trying, against all reason, to re-enter them. “Say you love me,” she thrice repeats, as if brute-forcing the response out of a noncompliant memory. “You don’t have to leave,” she murmurs, aware that he always already has. I tend toward this sort of overwrought reading when I already happen to like the song, but it doesn’t seem so overwrought when you get to that false ending and coda, which plays like the despondent “game over” version of a video game’s main theme. Even the title is like a joke Addison’s mind is playing on her: the part of the memory that sticks out the most is the universal commodity, bottled and branded for millions who are not her, overpowering any unique emotional tethers still fighting against the fact of their transience. The teenage mythos can haunt those who were unable to share in its fruits, but it saves the biggest treacheries for its true believers.
[9]

Jel Bugle: Kinda like a flat warm Pepsi, this one — no fizz. Do Pepsi get a cut? As with Tate McRae, it feels very B-list. I think it’s a bit cringy overall, but obviously I am wrong — I am a bit shocked to see 143 million streams for this song. Loses a point for terrible road safety. 
[3]

Isabel Cole: The thing about Diet Pepsi is that it’s the watered-down version of something that was already the inferior imitation of a product that, while nice enough itself as the occasional treat, is not something you can drink without remembering it’s factory-made, which — oh. Hm. Well.
[4]