The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. This is a non-exhaustive and totally subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy, discontent, or curiosity. Happy holidays.
“Diet Pepsi,” the lead single from Addison Rae’s debut album, Addison, dropped last August, and I haven’t stopped thinking of it since. The viral TikTok dance originally turned me on to the song, which is fitting considering Rae’s former life as a TikTok princess. But two new covers that dropped this year kept me coming back for more.
I, admittedly, am a sucker for a good cover. Ten years later, I’m still showing Childish Gambino’s cover of Tamia’s “So Into You” to anyone who will pay attention. Dolly’s “I Will Always Love You” invokes entirely different feelings for me than Whitney’s. Brooks & Dunn’s “Neon Moon” is about a middle-aged man in a dive bar, thinking of how he let a good woman get away. It’s all stale cigarettes, cracked booths under a buzzing beer sign, and regret—whereas Kacey Musgraves’ cover sounds like a celebratory song for a girl who just broke up with a loser boyfriend. She spins under a disco ball with her friends, pink lights flashing across her face, smiling wide—free. It makes me think of this scene from Sex and the City. What makes a cover so special is how it transforms a song into a wholly different one. It’s a fun way to pay tribute to a singer or band or to put a spin on a song from a completely different genre.
Rae’s “Diet Pepsi” is heady, lustful, and full of youthful urgency. She whispers, “Untouched, X-O,” breathlessly. There’s a nostalgic sensuality to it, pushing listeners to reminisce about their own experiences with young love (or lust) and losses of innocence. The song is danceable, bouncy pop music as it’s meant to be. “Diet Pepsi” was the perfect preamble to Rae’s debut album, released this June, which Pitchfork compared to those of pop icons like Madonna and Britney Spears. As a friend of mine put it recently after we listened to the entire album on a road trip, “Pop is so back.”
So I was pleasantly surprised when 2025 delivered two fresh covers of the song. In June, one of my favorite people making music right now, Blondshell, released a cover for SiriusXM. I immediately tuned in. Blondshell does something a little different with the song. She turns Rae’s pop track into a raw, vibey indie one. In her “Diet Pepsi,” the lyrics are laid bare, and the music is moodier. Where Rae’s is warm, intimate, and snappy, Blondshell’s is cooler, distanced, and muted. Rae’s “Diet Pepsi” is perfect for a summer playlist blasting through car speakers with the windows down. But I’d play Blondshell’s version through my noise-cancelling headphones on one of my broody walks through Brooklyn in October.
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Then, in August at the 2025 Las Culturistas Awards show, Ben Platt performed a theatrical “Diet Pepsi” that took the song to an entirely new place. In typical fashion, Platt brought a dramatic, campy flair to the pop song. The crowd laughed, but truly, my jaw dropped. I thought, “Wait. Is ‘Diet Pepsi’ actually an insanely emotional song?” As much as he sings the song, Platt performs it. His voice rises as the music swells into a grand display from his orchestral accompanists. “I like it from the fountain,” Platt ad libs. It is funny, but Platt takes the assignment seriously and makes “Diet Pepsi” his own. He makes eye contact with the camera, carefully articulates each word, and throws his hands up. To me, Platt’s rendition reads like a scene straight out of Glee, where Platt is a guest star just passing through McKinley High to teach the New Directions a thing or two about stage presence. Maybe he has a brief fling with a glee clubber before skipping town. It’s a very 2012-coded performance and I, for one, love it.
Listen, I’m not a music critic. I’m not a musician. But, I am a longtime enjoyer of music. I love that “Diet Pepsi,” in all its iterations, took us to so many different places as listeners, offering a little something for everyone. At a time when our algorithms are so siloed to our tastes and it feels like mass culture is dead, it’s special when we can still collectively enjoy something. While “Diet Pepsi” will certainly never be as iconic as Michael Jackson’s first moonwalk or Britney Spears performing on stage with a python, it managed to transcend our niche timelines and find surprising resonance many months after its release. That feels like a feat in and of itself, and it only further proves that yes, pop music really is sooo back.
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