In the week that I speak with Canadian pop star Tate McRae, she’s inescapable. Posters for her world tour are plastered across social media. Her songs are blasting from the speakers in Tesco. When I arrive at my Wednesday night dance class, the teacher is busy choreographing a routine to McRae’s turbo-charged, innuendo-filled latest release “Sports Car”.
It makes sense that McRae is everywhere right now, having just released her third, much-anticipated album. So Close To What is a punchier, more decisive offering compared to the vaguely radio-ready songs about teenage angst and lust that defined her early releases. Simply put, it’s more grown up – partly because, well, McRae has grown up.
“I feel so much more confident in my taste and the way I am as a person,” she tells me, speaking from her pristine showroom-looking apartment in Los Angeles. “I started writing music when I was 16, I really knew nothing. I didn’t really know what the f*** releasing a debut album meant. I was so young.” Granted, she’s only 21 now, but 17 already feels like a lifetime ago.
McRae’s debut album, 2022’s I Used to Think I Could Fly, traded in high-school crushes on tracks with titles like “hate myself”. She upped the ante on her second album Think Later, with the cocky R&B-inflected “greedy” peaking at No 3 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and UK Top 40 charts. That song, along with “exes” – a boastful ode to former lovers – catapulted McRae into the mainstream. Along the way, she has consolidated her image as a capital P pop star in the same vein as Addison Rae and Britney Spears, putting high-octane choreography at the centre of her live shows.
McRae’s rise reads like an industry checklist for how to become a modern-day pop star. For one thing, she’s a former child star, having lent her voice to the popular kid’s cartoon Lalaloopsy when she was 10. She placed third in the talent competition So You Think You Can Dance aged 13, and was one of the original dancers on the reality show Dance Moms alongside Maddie Ziegler. McRae pivoted into music the same way many Gen Z artists do, posting covers on YouTube, which would eventually go viral. Those earned her a co-sign from Billie Eilish and her producer brother Finneas, who co-wrote four out of the five songs on McRae’s 2020 EP all the things i never said.
Born in Calgary, Alberta, to a Canadian father and German mother, McRae moved to Los Angeles when she was 17 to pursue music full-time. “I was thrown into hundreds of writing sessions with hundreds of people being like, ‘This is the artist that you are.’ And that was really confusing,” she says. “For a second there I forgot what kind of music I like and what artists I like. I was just listening to everyone else’s favourite song. Everyone has a different idea of who they think you are and what they think your sound is.”
All those voices brought on an identity crisis, but McRae has emerged from it now with a singular vision, one that sees her routinely praised as the artist sent to resurrect the Noughties pop performance. Case in point: the viral music video for her hit song “greedy”. The clip showcased McRae’s signature ferocious struts, unruly dance moves and swooshing of her long blonde locks, with her high-pitched baby voice purring along a jolty R&B beat. It felt like it had been plucked from a different era of pop, one in which high-production value and sweaty dance troupes were king.
It comes as little surprise, then, that McRae is frequently compared to her forebears like Christina Aguilera and The Pussycat Dolls. The one she gets the most, though, is a young Britney Spears. “I find that flattering and scary. It’s such a crazy statement because no one can compare to Britney Spears. It’s like comparing someone to Michael Jackson!” she says almost shrieking, manically waving her French-manicured hands in the air. “That’s the blueprint!”
Much like her music, McRae is warm and relatable but often vague in her answers. The setting of our conversation feels casual – she’s sitting on a spotless white sofa, dressed in a slouchy jumper – but there’s a media-trained distance that never quite goes away. McRae speaks about the themes of love and romance on her new album, but without ever situating herself in her answers. One can hardly blame her for being private in an industry notorious for chewing up and spitting out young women.
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Compared to other pop stars whose music offers not-so-subtle insights into their private lives, like Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, and Taylor Swift, McRae’s lyrics feel more opaque. I glean more from her in this interview than I do analysing her three albums. ”I’m a very private person. I keep my circle small,” she admits. “But I do feel like I keep it real in my songwriting, it feels pretty transparent.”
In recent years, pop music has favoured empowerment anthems and swoony ballads, but McRae is interested in a different kind of love – the kind that makes Harley Quinn and the Joker’s relationship look healthy. “I think a lot of the time people want to hear either like ‘I’m super in love’ or “f*** you, I’m better without you’,’” she says. “No one wants to admit they miss an ex, especially if the love was super toxic – or that they learnt to love like that. In a really masochistic way, you start to fall in love with the really painful parts of it.” On the high-tempo, pulsating number “Revolving door”, McRae sings of a bad news boomerang boy who keeps coming back; she’s powerless to resist.
So Close To What does feature a collaboration with her boyfriend of one year, the Australian rapper The Kid Laroi. The sweetly titled “I know love” will undoubtedly send “Tid Mcroi” or “Kate Larae” stans into a frenzy. “It just felt like the natural thing to do,” says McRae of the collaboration.
While McRae is certain that So Close To What is her most honest offering yet, she does admit to needing a helping hand from her friend and alter ego Tatiana. She jokingly credits Tatiana as the brain behind the more risqué songs on the album. Tatiana, for example, apparently wrote the squeaky, ecstasy-filled “Dear god” on which McRae sings: “Hands on my chest and my knees on the carpet”. McRae grins. “I think everyone puts on a specific type of armour or guard to feel like they’re their best, most confident self and empowered self. And I think that’s my alter ego; I channel her whenever I wanna be careless and say f*** it and really take back the power.”
Her fans, then, may be taken aback by Tatiana’s candour. “It’s a bit more on the nose about things that I probably wouldn’t have said last year as a 20-year-old,” she says. What was holding her back? “As you get older, you get a little more outspoken. Music will always be for me. But there were a few topics that I wanted to talk about this time.”
Fame being one of them. In the past year, McRae says she’s experienced the “constant scrutiny” that women in the music industry face “for just existing”. “Everything you do gets ripped apart and gets talked about, and it makes you question everything, “ she says. “Someone will comment on the shape of my face or the way I said a specific word, or my tone, or the way I said something in a song.” It’s especially hard to hear when you’re still in the process of figuring out who you are yourself. “It can be a confusing thing to battle people’s opinions and your own opinion, and it can make your perception of yourself a little cloudy sometimes.”
The past year has been full of revelations. As she’s been thrust further into the spotlight, McRae is noticing how few female musicians are given credit for their creative output. “It’s a tale as old as time,” she sighs. “We’ve seen this with every single iconic female artist before. It’s never just them who thought of the great idea or who came up with the music video, or who creatively directed the whole show.”
It feels like McRae is very slowly peeling back her layers upon each release. She tells me this album’s title was inspired by this never-ending feeling of waiting for contentment. “Just looking in on myself as a 21-year-old girl and feeling like, when is the moment where you feel fully happy or satisfied with yourself? Or when you feel like you’ve done something?” she says. “It can feel like an endless loop. You’re always working towards something, and you never quite know what it is.” Slowly but surely, she is getting there.
‘So Close To What’ is out now via RCA Records
