Tate McRae: Beyond the Catchy Chords and Charismatic Choreos
Image Credits: Krainagrzybow Via Wikimedia Commons
Tate McRae has become one of pop music’s most compelling young artists, not just for her sharp choreography or glossy production, but for her ability to turn personal turmoil into relatable, vulnerable storytelling. As she reaches new career peaks, one thing stays constant - she grows, and her audience grows with her.
I first discovered Tate on her YouTube channel Create With Tate. Eleven-year-old me instantly clung to the dramatic angst of her early writing, the all-consuming hallway-crush intensity of “I think about a hundred thoughts and you are ninety-nine.” Tate herself was only fourteen when her debut single ‘One Day’ was released, yet her youthful vulnerability set up the honesty that continues to define her work.
As she shifted from a teenager writing alone in her bedroom to a young woman performing in sold-out arenas, her music evolved accordingly. The longing glances of ‘that way’ - “friends don’t look at friends that way” - gave way to the self-inflicted heartache of rubberband. By the time she’s all I wanna be arrived in 2022, she was confronting insecurities that felt sharper and far more familiar to those of us tackling teenage years alongside her.
Her second album, Think Later, marked a new era, where Tate’s dance background fused fully with her sound. The opening track declares: “sad girl bit got a little boring”, signalling a shift away from early melancholy, yet her emotional depth remained intact. A personal favourite of mine, grave, captures the quiet devastation of holding on too long: “you can only dig the grave so deep”. Faced with sharper cuts of heartbreak, tracks remain grounded in brutal truth: “I could never make you want me like I wanted to be wanted.”
Her newest album extends this honesty into adulthood’s messier terrain. Greenlight perfectly captures the paralysis between past wounds and present uncertainty (“maybe it’s a green light but I can’t go”), whilst ‘Purple Lace Bra’ questions whether people hear her or merely look at her. Central to her upbeat tour, dance tracks like bloodonmyhands hide complexity beneath its beat. Tate faces the consequences of a breakup, choosing to bathe in liberation instead of mourning over betrayal.
Now twenty-two, Tate writes music that reflects the clarity and freedom of independence. On NOBODY’S GIRL’, she revels in being young and single: “I am nobody’s girl, I love it so much”. In TRYING ON SHOES, she’s tackling personal tribulations alongside global success. A real-life accident, dropping her diary into a pool, becomes a metaphor for shedding a relationship where she’d have to distort herself. Though, Tate is confident in herself now, knowing she cannot become “someone [she’s] not and someone [she’ll] never be”.
In her wave of worldwide success, it’s easy to forget Tate’s youth as she sells out the O2 and Madison Square Garden. Yet the girls who once listened to that way in their bedrooms now dance to greedy in crowded clubs. We’re navigating new eras beyond adolescence. And somehow, Tate is still right there with us.