Addison Rae’s 2024 began with a bang: screaming excessive of mentor-slash-bestie Charli XCX’s viral “Von Dutch” remix and letting unfastened a brief, fiendishly easy earworm into A.G. Prepare dinner’s Britpop spotlight “Lucifer.” Rae’s first solo monitor of the 12 months, the shimmery Lanacore ballad “Food plan Pepsi,” grew to become her first Billboard hit, having acquired a tidy profile increase from its triumphant reside debut on the Sweat tour’s MSG cease; her follow-up, the ridiculous-but-enchanting “Aquamarine,” performed like a Ray of Gentle deep minimize sung by Nomi Malone. And each singles arrived with chic, humorous movies directed by Sean Worth Williams—cinematographer of Good Time, director of edgelord fairytale The Candy East—and creative-directed by Interview magazine impresario Mel Ottenberg, for that further little bit of cool-kid clout.
So a remix of “Aquamarine” by Rae’s dream collaborator, Arca—titled, clearly, “Arcamarine”—must be one other simple win. In fact, it’s in all probability Rae’s first actual miss this 12 months, a inventive misalignment that doesn’t make notably canny use of both musician’s abilities. There’s nothing offensive or unlistenable about “Arcamarine,” however that’s its first mistake: Each Rae and Arca have used their music to rage in opposition to the boundaries of fine style, and “Arcamarine” sounds a bit just like the form of secure, nameless dembow remixes that main labels use to juice chart numbers. (Arca’s greatest collaborations, like “KLK” and “Watch,” pressure vocalists to suit themselves into her mutant engineering; on a remix like this, she’s restricted to working with pre-existing vocals.) The slower pulse saps “Aquamarine,” one of many 12 months’s higher pop singles, of its thriller and drama; when it ends, you may’t assist however really feel form of blue.
