So Close To What by Tate McRae | Album Review

The third studio album from the Canadian dancer turned pop starlet puts a glitzy sheen over her middling vocals.

When I watched the latest season of Canada’s Drag Race, I heard a queen named Tiffany Ann Co call Tate McRae “the Britney of our generation.” Needless to say, I was a bit skeptical, but looking into her backstory, she has all the trappings of a genuine superstar.

Having trained in dance since the age of six, McRae made a name for herself early in the world of dance. She won Mini Best Female Dancer at the 2013 Dance Awards and, by age ten, became a brand ambassador for Capezio, a dance product company. Her accolades continued to rack up, culminating in her becoming the first Canadian finalist on the American competition show So You Think You Can Dance at just thirteen, placing third, despite her fellow Canadians being unable to vote for her.

But McRae had dreams beyond dance. Leveraging her newfound audience, she began uploading original songs to YouTube, immediately striking gold. Her first song, “One Day,” quickly garnered millions of views and set off a bidding war between eleven record labels.

In 2019, at just 16, she signed to RCA Records. Her 2020 single “You Broke Me First” firmly established her as a rising pop star, earning comparisons to Billie Eilish’s work with its moody production  and lyrics. In 2021, McRae made her first appearance in our newsletter with “You,” a deep house collaboration with Regard and Troye Sivan. 

Last year, she catapulted herself into the upper echelon of pop singers with “Greedy,” a female empowerment anthem laid out over an Eastern-tinged hip-hop beat. The song peaked at #3 on the Hot 100, earned nominations for both BRIT and MTV VMA awards, and won “Single of the Year” at the 2024 Juno Awards.

Two EPs and two albums later, she has amassed nearly 40 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and scored two songs with over 1.5 billion streams a piece. All this, and she’s only 21 years old—truly a Bieber-esque rise to superstardom.

All that said, I have never personally taken to her work, and on her new LP So Close To What, she still struggles to convince me she has the musical chops to stand out among her peers.

Case in point, McRae kicks off the record with “Miss Possessive,” a TikTok-ready pop banger about jealousy. As a song, I actually really enjoy it, there’s clearly talented producers and songwriters putting this together behind the scenes, but McRae as a singer adds so little to the mix. She’s supposed to be serving confrontational swagger, but her voice feels thin and lackadaisical instead.

That lack of vocal presence plagues the entire LP, and McRae is not helped by the many songs with spacey pop production that feels so ever-present in modern music. Tracks like “Greenlight” embody this sonically empty vibe, and it doesn’t help that I’ve heard “green light” metaphors about relationships done much better.

If there’s one thing McRae has going for her, though, it’s the singles. Just look at “Sports Car,” a Y2K era banger with a heavy Pussycat Dolls energy that is just made to be a club smash. “It’s OK I’m OK” also fits this bill, with its rapid-fire subbass tickling my brain in the best way. That said, she is the least distinct thing about these songs, and I feel like they’d be killer songs no matter who sings the lead.

That ultimately keeps me skeptical about claims that Tate McRae is the next Britney. While I have no doubt she puts on a killer performance with her spectacular dance ability, her skill as a singer simply hasn’t risen to match yet. Maybe with more time, she’ll land on a sound that suits her voice, but for now, she remains one of many pop stars making generic pop music.

Production: 5/10

Lyrics: 5/10

Songwriting: 5/10

Overall: 5/10

Favorites: Sports Car, It’s OK I’m OK

****************************************************************************

Thank you for reading! What did you think of this album? Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts and recommendations.