Tate McRae was noticeably missing from the 2025 Grammy Awards this past month, but she has been slowly gaining traction in the pop world for years and may soon be getting the recognition she truly deserves as her newest music surges in popularity.
Tate’s talent has been years in the making as she danced across our screens before the world knew her name in pop music. Some of her early career highlights include performing as a dancer on Justin Bieber’s Purpose World Tour, getting featured on the Ellen DeGeneres Show and coming in 3rd place on season 13 of So You Think You Can Dance amongst many other accomplishments. She introduced herself to the world as a singer/songwriter in 2017 after starting her Create with Tate series on YouTube that showcased her original songs for the first time. Shortly after she was signed to RCA records and was launched into the journey of finding herself as a pop star.
As a signed artist, Tate’s song “Greedy” was her first single to chart in the top ten on Billboard and spearheaded her sonic shift from sad girl pop to upbeat dance hits. Now with the release of her third studio album, “So Close to What”, Tate is giving us pop perfection with a matured sound that combines her vulnerable songwriting with danceable electro synths influenced by the carefree club music of the early 2000’s.
Tate released three singles that introduced fans to the album before the official release of “So Close to What” on Feb. 21st including “It’s ok I’m ok”, “2 hands” and “Sports car” all of which show not only how Tate is coming into herself as an artist, but also as an unapologetic and confident young woman through the lens of love, loss and sexuality.
Album Highlights
“Sports car” is a sultry dance pop song with airy whispers that get butterflies going in your stomach like you’re falling in love for the first time again. In an interview with Variety, Tate discusses writing “Sports car” as a comparison between the adrenaline felt from speeding down the highway to the exhilaration of how it feels to have fun being young, in love and exploring your sexuality. It’s confident, sexy, fun, flirty and unapologetic. Inspired by “Wait (The Whisper Song)” performed by the Ying Yang Twins that was released in 2005, the hit features a fully whispered chorus that was new sonic territory for Tate. It seems the risk paid off as the song has skyrocketed to her number 1 song on Spotify.
The music video for “Sports car” further explores Tate’s relationship to finding herself and her sound in the music industry as she stuns in a variety of different outfits that represent different versions of herself like luxury cars in a show room. Her star power shines in this song and video as a woman proud of herself and who she is becoming. Between the sexy and fun message of the song as well as the catchy beat, this song is a stand out on the album that feels like it could be directly off of a Britney Spears record.
Both “It’s ok I’m ok” and “2 hands” reiterate a similar message with equally as tantalizing beats. “2 hands” features the sports car visuals sorely missed from the “Sports car” music video while “It’s ok I’m ok” features Tate on the streets of NYC showing off her dance chops. They’re both songs that make you want to get up and move which feel authentic to her dance roots and thus what makes “So Close to What” feel more “Tate” than previous albums.
Another standout song on the album is “Revolving door”, which features a dance number, but stays true to Tate’s original songwriting roots surrounding heartbreak. The music video opens with Tate in a standing split and ends with her crying on the floor ready to do it all over again. It appears to refer to her exhaustion in a relationship that keeps going around in circles, but potentially also her relationship with the duality of having a career in music. She loves the music, but hates having to prove herself and how serious she is to the craft in the media.
Regardless, Tate proves she (and women as a whole) can be both sexy and deep thinkers with her song “Purple lace bra” that furthers this narrative. It’s another soft song that opens with a beautiful and ethereal string section. It discusses the sexist expectations that women must be beautiful to be seen as marketable in music, but when they dare to feel beautiful in their own bodies by owning their sexuality, they are reduced to only being pretty. She unapologetically acknowledges the unfairness of this double standard in “Purple lace bra” while actively working to erase this stigma by owning her complexity through the different perspectives she takes on throughout the album.
In an Interview for Apple Music, she discusses this concept even more.
She states, “I’ve never written from the perspective of um experiencing um the good and the bad feelings of being a woman before. I think because I’ve just genuinely been too young before to even know that those feelings existed. Um, but it was weird. I felt like I turned 21 this year and um you like step into your body a little more and you feel sexy and confident and empowered, but you know then I also felt the repercussions of experiencing that on the internet like the media. This song really did feel like a conversation between me and the media like, you’re not listening to me.”
Other songs on the album that deserve honorable mentions include “Miss Possessive”, “Nostalgia” and “Dear God” because of their catchy hooks and honest lyrics.
“So Close to What” is an album that recounts feeling like there is a deadline that just keeps moving to achieve an ambiguous and unattainable goal, but when it comes to Tate’s music career, this album has moved her forward in my book. This album is the best of Tate’s to date due to its success in bringing back the missed sound of the early 2000’s in a way that still has modern elements to it, discusses important topics and feels the most authentic to Tate as an artist. What were your favorites from the album? Do you think “So Close to What” will land her a Grammy next year? Let us know!