Addison Rae, “Diet Pepsi” (2024)

Remember those days in your second car? Good times.

“Diet Pepsi” might be the best somewhat-popular song of 2024 that you still don’t know. In a year where many young women have made the jump from casual artists to superstars (Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan), it’s nice to see the underdog baton being passed to the next wave.

Analysis of the Lyrics

My boy’s a winner, he loves the game
My lips reflect off his cross-gold chain.
I like the way he’s telling me
My ass looks good in these ripped blue jeans

A quickly painted picture of a girl fawning over her alpha-male boyfriend. He likes glitz and glamour, but I don’t get the sense that she requires that in a guy. She appreciates that it’s his style—and that she can accessorize him, too.

A cursory listen makes the word “ass” really stand out. It’s rather shocking, actually. The song has a Taylor Swift-esque pop sound, but Swift would never objectify her body this overtly—or if she did, she wouldn’t sing about enjoying that some guy did it. This is a girly girl who enjoys the attention and validation.

My cheeks are red like cherries in the spring
Body’s a work of art you’d die to see
Untouched, XO
Young lust, let’s—(ah)

Firstly, cherries don’t ripen until May or June. Cherry trees do bloom in the spring, but their flowers are white or pink, not red. So, she’s not a botanist. But I like that there’s a line about cherries in a song called “Diet Pepsi.” Along with the bubbly production and understated, sped-up vocal delivery (which we’ll get to later),  a sense of sugary coldness is conveyed here.

I don’t buy that Addison is singing about a girl who has never had sex. She and this guy have likely been together for a while, but when it’s time to have sex, she likes to role-play as if it’s her first time. There are less fulfilling sexual fantasies.

When we drive in your car, I’m your baby (so sweet)
Losing all my innocence in the back seat
Say you love, say you love, say you love me (love me)
Losing all my innocence in the back seat

Addison defines herself as an accessory to her boyfriend’s lifestyle. She doesn’t feel like she matters less to him than his jewelry or his car—it’s just that everything fits together perfectly.

“Losing all my innocence in the backseat.” This song isn’t for young girls losing their virginity. It’s for women in their late thirties and up, evoking memories of making out in the backseat of a car with the stereo playing. Do you remember the first time you made out with a guy in his car? That.

Most notable about the chorus is the way “losing all my innocence” is pitch-shifted, giving her voice a Chipmunk-like quality. Coupled with reverb and a high-pass filter that thins out the vocal, the song has a dreamlike, ethereal quality.

I always find significant pitch shifting interesting—how did she even write this melody? She likely didn’t originally conceive it at that pitch; it was probably a production decision that elevates the song’s uniqueness. My guess is that she wrote the melody an octave lower, and then a producer suggested raising it artificially. She may have recorded that line with the track slowed down so she could naturally hit those notes before speeding it back up. The result is a pristine, glass-like effect that stands out from anything on the radio right now.

Break all the rules ’til we get caught
Fog up the windows in the parking lot
Summer love (ah, ah), sexy
Sitting on his lap, sippin’ Diet Pepsi

She and her guy create their own little world in his car. Normal rules don’t apply. When I was in high school, there always seemed to be that one couple who could get away with making out in the school parking lot. The reaction wasn’t “PDA? Gross.” It was more like, “They must be so in love.”

“Diet Pepsi” feels meticulously crafted to evoke nostalgia—a longing for a relationship where your first time feels just as special as your first-ever experience. I doubt Addison Rae is reflecting on her actual first time; that was probably mundane or awkward. What she’s doing is crafting an idealized memory: a moment where everything feels perfect. “Losing all my innocence” could just as easily be read as roleplay, which is why she emphasizes it so insistently.

I enjoy that the song is called “Diet Pepsi” and that it’s just a throwaway detail in the second verse. When I think of Diet Pepsi, I picture a glass bottle freshly pulled out of an ice-filled cooler. On a summer night where the windows are fogging up from body heat, what could be more refreshing? (I just don’t know where they’re getting a Diet Pepsi in a random parking lot. Did they bring a cooler?)

Some songs that use noticeable pitch shifting (at least half a pitch or more) include “Oblivion” by Grimes, “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” by Tame Impala, and “When I’m Sixty-Four” and “Strawberry Fiekds Forever” by The Beatles. The reason this section sounds so much like Grimes (my favorite modern recording artist) is that it achieves that same high-pitched, dreamlike vocal effect without her voice going into head voice. It retains its fullness while sitting at an almost impossibly high register.

I write my name with lipstick on your chest
I leave a mark so you know I’m the best

This line is funny. Is she actually pulling out a tube of lipstick and writing “Addison Rae” on his torso? She’s obviously just kissing him all over with his shirt off, leaving little marks so that if anyone sees him shirtless before he showers, they’ll know he was with her. “Writing her name with lipstick” is a playful euphemism.

As the song nears its conclusion, the production takes a twist. There’s a break, but a few beats later, the music comes back with a key shift. However, it’s not a standard key change—it sounds like the entire track has been slowed down, enhancing the song’s hazy, surreal atmosphere.

How does she perform this song live? She does not appear to actually sing the line “losing all my innocence in the backseat.” She sings the first half and then dances around and smiles for the second part. I’m still a bit perplexed by the exact recording techniques used in the song. That line was definitely recorded while the music was slowed down (before being sped back up). But it could also be, “When I’m Sixty-Four”-style, that the entire track was originally sped up for the first 80% of the song. To then shift the pitch speed in the form of a key change feels like a fresh, novel approach.

As far as I know, this is the only pop hit that uses this trick so dramatically. For the last chorus to sound like it’s coming from a cassette tape played at a different speed is subtly innovative. It’s rare for a pop song to intentionally call attention to the artificiality of its own vocal processing.

The song seems revolutionary in its own quiet way.

Lyrical content: C+/B-
Song rating: 4/5