Tate McRae has a brand new album out called So Close To What. This is a very popular album, but you may be asking yourself the same questions that we were asking ourselves a mere week ago—questions like Who is Tate McRae? and What other song does this Tate McRae song remind me of? and Why are people mad at Tate McRae? These are all good and important and valid questions to be asking. Thank you so much for asking them.
Luckily, the two of us are garbage monsters who eat garbage all day long, so we are qualified to introduce you to Tate McRae and all of her mundane scandals.
Who Is Tate McRae?
Kelsey McKinney: Hello Sabs! First off, I want to thank you for being here, and also congratulate you! You did it! Do you know what you did?
Sabrina Imbler: What did I do!?
Kelsey: You helped make So Close to What, the new album by Tate McRae, the number one album in America!! How does it feel?
Sabrina: Wow. You know what, I’ve been wanting to be more involved with this country, so I’m proud of the labor I put in to make this happen. And by labor, I mean streaming So Close to What nonstop for the past week, to the point where my partner told me if I played it over dinner one more time they would get a headache.
And Kelsey, thank you for your crucial work of introducing me to the discography of Tate McRae, a singer whose name I’ve ambiently heard for the past few years but could never explain. Until now.
Kelsey: It is quite funny that Lauren asked us to write a “Tate McRae Explainer” when—in reality—we are both very new to the Tater Tot Hive. I too had heard her name for years buzzing about in the background of Who? Weekly, but I never paid much attention to her until I was in Los Angeles two weeks ago on book tour, and her billboard was EVERYWHERE! Wherever I looked, I saw “TATE MCRAE” in lights!
Sabrina: How did it feel to be touring the country alongside Tate?
Kelsey: Well, I admit I thought that Tate was much less famous than she apparently is. Perhaps this is a factor of “being in my 30s,” but I did not realize that she is famous enough to be playing arenas. I tried to get you and me tickets to see her in Philadelphia as a bit, but they were $200 each, and that is too much to pay for a bit!
Sabrina: I should also say that, for at least a year, I thought Tate McRae and Addison Rae were the same person. I had never seen their faces or heard their music or seen their dances, so the rhyme was enough. But now I can say I am a proud fan of both Rae and McRae. I am so excited to dive into the Tate lore with you.
Kelsey: Unlike Addison Rae, Tate McRae did not come from TikTok. She was the first Canadian finalist on So You Think You Can Dance. Here are some other Tate facts. She is 21 years old. This is somehow her third full-length album. And (for the sports fans) she once dated NHL player Cole Sillinger and performed at the NHL All-Star Game.
Sabrina: Is Tate McRae the hardest-working woman in show business? When you were 21, had you made three of anything? I had no idea she was on So You Think You Can Dance, nor did I know that show was happening internationally.
Kelsey: No, it’s not! She was on the AMERICAN version! Apparently! I mean, I didn’t watch it.
Sabrina: I hope all Canadians who think they can dance feel inspired by Tate’s ascendance to stardom!
Kelsey: I think because of her dancing and being nice and having a lot of hair, they’re trying to brand her as a second-coming of Paula Abdul. But I don't know if that’s gonna work!
Sabrina: Hmm. I also saw some stories that had a headline like “Tate McRae is flattered by the comparisons to Britney Spears” which caught me by surprise. Is that because she also dances?
Kelsey: I want to be very clear, as a Britney fan, that I think the only reason that comparison is being made is that low-rise pants are back and Tate McRae is wearing them and dancing around and also she is 21 years old.
Sabrina: That makes a lot more sense. Now I want to share another fact that I know about Tate McRae. I knew that she was Canadian, because I read the Wikipedia section about her early life, which is how I learned that she was born in Calgary. But then she lived in Oman as a child, because her dad was a lawyer for oil and gas companies. I wish Tate would incorporate more of this unique life experience into her songs. Imagine a pop ballad about the oil and gas industry!
Kelsey: ... What? I don’t even know what to do with this information. I … hate it?
Sabrina: I don't know either, except that I feel like I would talk about it all the time? Or I at least would let it fuel my music.
What Other Song Does This Tate McRae Song Remind Me Of?
Kelsey: Now that we’ve covered pretty much everything there is to know about Tate McRae, should we discuss So Close to What?
Sabrina: I would love to, Kelsey. You turned me on to this album because you really connected with the song “Miss possessive.” Can you share what you like about that song?
Kelsey: I love “Miss possessive.” This is an incredibly cursed sentence I’m about to write: I discovered it because Sydney Sweeney had set it as the song for one of her Instagram posts with Paris Hilton. I later learned that this was because the voice at the beginning of the song is Sweeney’s, so in fact it was not genuine love, but self-promotion.
Sabrina: Wow, did you recognize the voice as Sydney Sweeney’s?
Kelsey: No! I didn’t! But I think something about it triggered the part of my brain that was raised on, for example, Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind” and Lindsey Lohan’s “Rumors.” It has the over-production and quantity of writers of a much richer time in the music industry.
Sabrina: Both great songs.
Kelsey: Are they?
Sabrina: Well, here’s the thing. I consume a lot of genres of trash: food, TV, music, books, etc. I unabashedly love all kinds of pop music, and I think I genuinely appreciate both great pop and bad pop, but sometimes that makes it hard to tell the difference between them.
Kelsey: Yeah, this is a big problem I have. I don’t think So Close to What is a “good” album, and also the two of us have been listening to it non-stop! I love garbage! Delicious!
Sabrina: The first song I listened to off So Close to What was “Sports Car,” which I found on a Spotify playlist. I played it on the speaker and, upon my initial listen, the song was incomprehensible to me. I could not pick out a melody, a theme, or even half of the lyrics. It was almost like a garbled imitation of a song. But then, after your urging, Kelsey, I listened again and suddenly found I could not stop.
Kelsey: “Sports Car”—the current No. 16 song in America—makes me feel insane. It’s like what if a Pussycat Dolls song got really, really dizzy. It feels like a fever dream. Despite listening to it approximately 500 times, I have genuinely no idea what half the lyrics are. Yet! I woke up several days ago to my brain whispering, “you got a sportsssss carrrrrr.”
Sabrina: I, too, had this experience of waking up wanting to sing a song off the album. It’s sticky! Like Cool Ranch Doritos! I also watched the music video for “Sports Car” because I was curious to see her dancing, but I found the music video baffling. There is NO sports car in “Sports Car.” The whole song, as I’ve come to understand it, is that she wants to get down with her boyfriend in his sports car. Why is there no car!?!?
Kelsey: Woah! I haven’t watched it. Let me do that.
I cannot believe that this is beginning in what appears to be … an office.
Sabrina: It’s almost Severance-coded, the many doorways.
Kelsey: It’s giving: “Your outie is a dancer.”
Sabrina: "Your outie was the first Canadian finalist on So You Think You Can Dance." Something I also felt while watching this music video was that each of McRae’s innies was a parody of a real, better pop star. Like, one of her personas looks just like Lady Gaga, and another looks like the Damien Hirst-esque photoshoot of Charli XCX for the cover of New York magazine, where she's suspended in a tank of water.
Kelsey: She’s also … barely dancing. She’s mostly moving her arms around which, as a white woman, I cannot critique too much, but her whole thing is that she's supposed to be a “dancer.”
Sabrina: Right!! I even did further research and watched her performance at the 2024 BRIT Awards. But this performance did not have any meaningful dancing, and also the entire set was basically brat green, which, in the year of our lord 2024, was a strange choice for a singer building her own brand. I cannot articulate her vibe or aesthetic as a singer beyond having long hair and wearing low-rise pants.
Kelsey: One thing you have to hand to Britney is that she was always dancing.
Sabrina: And she was dancing well!
Kelsey: Sometimes, to pump myself up, I will watch the Britney performance from the 2000 VMAs (not 2001 with the snake) where she pulls off a glittery suit to reveal a GLITTERY BODY SUIT. We used to be a country!!!!
Sabrina: This is the thing about Tate McRae’s music: I like listening to it a lot, but it always leaves me with a yearning for actually good pop music. We’ve talked about how many of the songs on So Close to What sound like other, better pop songs. And it’s been a real pleasure listening to them after listening to So Close to What.
Kelsey: You and I have even created a playlist called “So Close to…What?” where we are attempting to pair songs from the Tate McRae album with other pop songs that sound very, very similar. It’s a fun game!
Sabrina: We’re linking the playlist, and if you have songs you think we should add, please drop them in the comments!
Why Are People Mad At Tate McRae?
Sabrina: Kelsey, can we talk about the Tate McRae signature controversy that you told me about?
Kelsey: Oh my god, did I tell you about that? In my memory, you told me! But I’m obsessed with this stupid scandal.
Sabrina: I have a bad memory, so you’re probably right!
Kelsey: Just two people with bad memories saying “Idk!!!!” back and forth forever.
Sabrina: So my recollection of this scandal is that when fans bought vinyls, posters, and CDs allegedly signed by Tate, the signatures all looked totally different—not different in the sense of like, someone’s hand is tired from signing thousands of CDs, but different in the sense that they were signed by different people.
Kelsey: This is so funny to me, because it would absolutely make sense that a pop star would delegate the signing of records to someone else. It takes a long time to sign stuff, and records are famously fragile! But do a better job!!!! The Tate McRae subreddit was not happy about this.
Sabrina: Kelsey are you active in the Tate McRae subreddit? Did they also talk about the fact that her album cover appeared to be mysteriously changed from a picture of McRae wearing a denim thong in the middle of a road to a shot of her sitting on a floor looking at a projection of herself?
Kelsey: No! But I love it there because every single person is posting a picture of their signed album and asking “is this fake?” and everyone is responding “looks fake” no matter what.
Sabrina: I’m going to start doing that with photos of signed copies of You Didn’t Hear This From Me. Starting a little drama just for fun!
Kelsey: The thing is, after signing so many books, there's an alternate universe where I could believe all these signatures are real. Your signature really does deteriorate when you’re signing a lot! The problem is that many of them do seem to be weird copies of what her signature should look like instead of loopy deteriorations.
Sabrina: This led to one of the funniest sentences I’ve read recently, which was sent by a customer service rep from Universal Music Group: “The signed artwork associated with ‘So Close To What Signed CD’ is handled directly to reflect Tate McRae’s genuine signature. We work hard to maintain the genuine nature of these items, and please rest assured that your piece is authentic.” Handled directly! That’s what you need to maintain the genuine nature of things.
Kelsey: God, this is so good. “Handled directly to reflect” is just perfect. Very good! That’s believable, sir. They aren’t even trying to pretend she signed it.
Sabrina: Do we have anything else to say about Tate McRae? I don’t think I know anything else about her
Kelsey: No! We’ve said enough. We need to return to our duty: streaming So Close to What.
Sabrina: This is the one situation where I am proud to serve my country.
