Welcome to Sleeper Hit Support Group, a column diving into the song currently occupying the bottom spot of the Billboard Hot 100.

In a pop landscape that asks more questions that it answers, I'm setting out to answer three questions about each of these songs: how it got here, if the song is good, and where it's going. In this 100th spot we'll find unlikely ascents, falls from grace, and resurgences of hits from bygone eras.

Today, we're queening out and taking a look at "Fame Is A Gun" by Addison Rae.

How did it get here?

If you told me three years ago that I would not only be covering Addison Rae as a successful, charting artist but that I would be excited to do so, I would've thought you were huffing paint. 25-year-old Addison Rae Easterling was born and raised just north of the bayou in Lafayette, Louisiana, but her southern roots have been all but abandoned in her career. She's dropped the accent she swears she used to have. "I want to be prim and poised,” Rae told Rolling Stone. “Marilyn Monroe never said ‘y’all.’”

Rae's parents had a fraught on-and-off relationship, divorcing during her childhood and remarrying when she was a teenager. They would go on to have a very public second divorce in the background of their daughter's social media stardom. "Wish my mom and dad could've been in love," she'd admit on a song a few years later.

Rae was a performer from an early age, joining the world of competitive dance (not too dissimilar from what's portrayed on Dance Moms) at age six, and becoming a part of her high school's cheerleading squad. She attended Louisiana State University in 2019 to study broadcast journalism, and dropped out after less than one semester amid her exponential success on TikTok when the platform was still in its infancy. The vast majority of her content revolved around participating in dance trends, which were quick (usually less than 30 seconds) and easily replicable due to the built-in limitations of vertical video.

In December of 2019, Rae and her family (including her two younger brothers Enzo and Lucas, who were 12 and 6 at the time) up and moved to Los Angeles to support her budding career as an influencer. They clearly made the right decision, as widespread isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic would make TikTok the most popular it ever has been and ever will be.

That same month, Rae would become one of the inaugural 21 members of The Hype House, a TikTok influencer collective founded by Chase "Lil Huddy" Hudson, Thomas Petrou, Daisy Keech, and Alex Warren (yes, that Alex Warren) headquartered at its namesake Los Angeles mansion. In said mansion, the collective's members would collaborate and make content on what was reported to be an unnecessarily demanding schedule, and many members faced scrutiny for perpetual ignorance towards California COVID safety protocols. It's unclear the extent to which Rae herself lived in that house; but her tenure in the collective lasted just shy of six months, leaving alongside fellow teenage TikTok titans, sisters Charli and Dixie D'Amelio.

In the midst of all this, Rae would become some sort of sex symbol. Australian pop-rap star The Kid LAROI released the song "Addison Rae" in March of 2020, which more or less broke him through to US audiences. The song has pretty much nothing to do with Rae specifically. Her name was used as some kind of mutually assured clout tactic, and it worked. Its nonspecific chorus goes "I need a bad bitch, uh / Addison Rae / Lil' shawty the baddest, yeah / and she got her ways." What are "her ways?" I don't think anyone knows – not even LAROI himself. The two had never met before this song was made.

Here's Addison telling the folks at Genius what the song means to her:

That same month, she would appear in the music video for rapper Lil Mosey's #8-peaking hit "Blueberry Faygo" alongside Hype House co-founder Lil Huddy.

In December of 2020, Rae would be invoked in a Lil Yachty guest verse on the DJ Scheme song "E-ER": "I want Addison Rae to become my doctor and check on my privates (Woo) / Put her in a skirt and a scarf like a pilot." Gross!

This adjacent involvement in the music industry, though, would lead Addison to begin making her own music, a desire she clued her managers in on (as well as acting) right before COVID struck. She played the female lead in a gender-swapped Netflix remake of the 1999 rom-com She's All That aptly titled He's All That in 2021. The movie, as you could imagine, was widely critically panned. However, it performed well enough to earn her a multimillion dollar contract with the streamer.

For her musical ambitions, Rae's team sent her straight into the pop machine. She studied songwriting with pop ghostwriting veteran Jacob "JKash" Kasher Hindlin, whose writing has sent five songs to #1 in the last 16 years (for those curious, those songs are Kesha's "We R Who We R", Jawsh 685's "Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat) (with Jason Derulo)", and Morgan Wallen's "Last Night", "Love Somebody", and "What I Want (featuring Tate McRae)"). Rae co-wrote her lead single "Obsessed" with Hindlin after four months of lessons, and recorded the song in one session with Benny Blanco tapped for production.

Released in March 2021, "Obsessed" made no real commercial splash and was not taken seriously. The failure of "Obsessed" was so immense that the album it was supposed to serve as the lead single for was indefinitely shelved. Rae was quickly written off as yet another TikToker desperate to cash in on their 15 minutes of fame through every possible avenue. I don't blame them – the song fucking sucks. The hushed, monotone vocals comically juxtapose the maximalist Blanco pop-playbook production.

Things began to change for Addison when she traded out her Charlis – D'Amelio for XCX. “Meeting Charli XCX was a pivotal moment in my life. She's been a big sister and mentor for me," she told Rolling Stone. After Rae's prospective debut was shelved, she started taking sessions with more writers and producers.

Charli XCX, who has ghostwritten her fair share of hits, was the one that stuck. The two corroborated that they connected instantly. After listening to some of the shelved songs, Charli took particular liking to a track called "2 die 4". Miraculously, those songs leaked in 2022, and people liked them. Suddenly, Rae found a second window for pop stardom.

Charli XCX added a verse to "2 die 4", and along with three of the other leaked songs, was released in the form of the self-released AR EP in August 2023. While not yet fully respected, Rae had dug herself out of being a laughing stock.

While a lot of labels were not interested in taking her on after the stark underperformance of her only released single, Rae was introduced to Columbia Records CEO Ron Perry through her then-boyfriend, producer Omer Fedi (Lil Nas X, Sam Smith, Bruno Mars). They signed her after the EP had proven relatively successful.

I'm not sure if the label masterminded this or not, but around this time, Addison started building up a persona as a "student of pop" and auteur of taste. Whether it be through bold fashion choices or clear homages to the pop divas of yesteryear, she was catching people's attention and getting them to reconsider their preconceived notions towards her.

In March of 2024, Addison was tapped for the remix of BRAT lead single "Von dutch". More than any actual lyrics she delivered on the track, the elongated, high pitched scream she lets out to usher in the outro is what went viral. More than any other isolated moment, this is when Addison Rae the pop star was born.

A few months later in August 2024, Rae began what would end up being a ten month long rollout for her eponymous debut (and only?) record. She met Max Martin affiliated Swedish producer/songwriters Luka Kloser and Elvira Anderfjärd, who she'd go on to co-write the entire album with. It's been corroborated in several interviews how seamless and natural the collaboration was.

Almost every song on Addison would be born out of a moodboard Rae would share with Kloser and Anderfjärd, and the two would be able to translate the vision into music. Quoted for Rae's Rolling Stone cover story, Rosalía had the following to say about her: “She’s the absolute project manager of her work and has a very clear vision of what she’s creating. Her choreographies seem so beautiful to me. I love how she brings the 2000s American pop star back to these days.”

The first taste of this new-and-improved artiste was "Diet Pepsi", a true testament to Rae's Spearsian ambitions. Her falsetto is light and airy as she sings the sticky chorus: "When we drive in your car, I'm your baby / Losing all my innocence in the backseat / Say you love, say you love, say you love me." It's sexy and romantic and will get stuck in your head whether you want it to or not. It was Rae's first Hot 100 entry, debuting just over a month after release and peaking at #54 another month later.

The record's second and third singles, "Aquamarine" and "High Fashion", did not chart, but the former earned Rae a co-sign and remix from acclaimed electronic producer Arca. Fourth single "Headphones On", my favorite of the bunch, had a one week stint at #87 a few weeks after its release. As TND's own Andy Steiner put it in our staff year-end list, "Maybe it’s the delicate balance the song strikes between Gen-Z detachment and genuine earnestness. Most likely, it’s Rae’s belief in music itself as an agent of change, joy, and relief. She’s right there alongside us, bumping the volume on her headphones to make the day go by quicker."

I don’t smoke cigarettes and I vow to stay away from them for as long as I live. But if I had to guess how it’d feel to smoke one under the awning of a coffee shop to shrug off whatever stressor was prodding the back of my brain, it’d feel like this song.

By this point, Rae had become acclaimed and revered by many that reviled her just a couple short years prior. So, with all that said...

Is the song any good?

Yes!!! Finally!! After weeks of covering songs I am at best ambivalent towards, I have finally been graced with the opportunity to write about a song that I quite like.

"Fame Is A Gun", released May 30th 2025, was the fifth and final single from Addison, which released a week later. It peaked at #73 last June, and has peeped in and out of the bottom 25 slots of the chart in the months since. Its most recent bump is likely due to Rae performing it at the Grammys last month during the Best New Artist medley. A lot of people seemed to be up in arms about her vocal performance here in particular, but I think she sounded perfectly fine.

More than any other song on the record, "Fame Is A Gun" feels like a statement of intention for Addison Rae as a pop star. "Don't ask too many questions / That is my one suggestion / You know I keep it real / I live for the appeal," she taunts in the first verse. She wants to dive headfirst into fame and celebrity, no matter what lies in its wake. Even so, she toes the line between being driven and tongue in cheek. "Love is a drug that I can't deny / I'm your dream girl but you're not my type / You've got a front row seat, and I / I got a taste of the glamorous life," goes the back half of the chorus.

In her list of the best 40 pop songs of 2025, Stereogum columnist Katherine St. Asaph described that "Even as [Rae] boasts about guns and drugs and being too unattainable for you, there's an unassumingness, even mousiness, to her voice, and a sense that it's all just dress-up at the end of the day."

The synths in "Fame" are entrancing as they pulse and flourish. It's evocative of all the pop music Addison claims to be a student of, culminating in something tangible. It rounds out the persona of a pop star the public is still trying to wrap their heads around as every think-piece offers conflicting interpretations.

Where is it going?

Rae is allegedly still signed to that multimillion dollar, multi-picture deal with Netflix, and was slated to begin filming one of those movies last year. Is this contract still set to be fulfilled? There's no evidence to the contrary. Initially, Addison was billed as Rae's debut and only album, but considering its success and its culmination in a Best New Artist Grammy nod, that decision could very well be reversed. Perhaps acting in those Netflix movies will allow fans of her music to miss her enough to drum up substantial hype for a potential follow-up.

I wanted to use this section, though, to provide a theory I have for the future of pop music, using Addison as proof of concept: The kids do not watch TV anymore. As a result, we've come to the tail end of a generation of ex-act pop stars, with Sabrina Carpenter's lagged ascent being the last of them.

The Disney pop star pipeline started in the 90s when Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera were all in the Mickey Mouse Club revival series at the same time. Through the backing of Disney's cultural cache, all three were launched to pop stardom by the end of the decade. In part due to these success stories, Disney went on to actively set their stars up for music careers while acting in Disney Channel shows and/or movies, which they'd do by airing their music videos during commercial breaks and playing the artist on their in-house AM station Radio Disney (which ceased operation in 2021). Their most prominent success stories from this machine were Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato, who all starred in Disney channel shows/movies in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Even with the success that Disney granted them, though, they would only reach their greatest heights once the Mouse was out of the picture and they'd clumsily (and very publicly) find their footing as adult pop stars. All three of Cyrus, Gomez, and Lovato have had documentaries made about the brutal realities of their child stardom and the dire adverse affects it had on their young adulthood (especially for Lovato, who has an extensive history of drug abuse).

As new, younger stars went through the Disney Channel system in its waning years, there was a clear pattern to be avoided. Sabrina Carpenter, who began releasing records with Disney's storied label Hollywood Records while starring in Disney Channel's gender-swapped Boy Meets World reboot, took several years to get out of her contract. Her ascent to the top-of-her-game pop star she is today only began once she no longer had to have her work run through Disney's strict sanitation standards.

By contrast, Olivia Rodrigo was able to evade a similar fate. Rodrigo got her first leading role at the network a couple years after Carpenter, which likely prevented the push for her to sign to Hollywood Records as its priority in the wider Disney umbrella continued to decline. After the song Rodrigo wrote for her character in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series went viral, she signed to Geffen and found pop success immediately.

One music industry executive who worked on the release of Rodrigo's debut Sour said that “the messaging was very much ‘she’s an artist, she’s a songwriter, she writes the songs herself’," while at Hollywood, the stars were “seen as talent who were already associated with Disney. It’s not taken as seriously.”

Time has proven that Disney no longer has the grasp on the teen and tween (do tweens even exist anymore?) audience they once did, especially as their primary source of entertainment continues to center itself on social media above all else. But in the absence of this playbook, the suits in the pop world have adapted by turning their gaze to social media. Labels now conduct the vast majority of their A&R research on social media, and if this years' Best New Artist nominees are any indication, that will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.

Trying to turn TikTokers into pop stars has similar advantages to how labels developed ex-acts: previously crafted personas, built-in fanbases, and prior experience in the public eye. If anyone is, Addison Rae is the proof that this can be a winning formula. (And to a lesser extent, so is Alex Warren.)

Will we see a post-TikTok music industry? I really hope so, but Addison Rae is a nice silver lining while we wait.