This was supposed to be it. This was supposed to be career defining. A statement on the heights Tate McRae’s potential could take her. Instead, So Close To What cements Tate’s position as a singles pop artist with the highest of highs and deep deep lows. A failure to capitalize on what seemed like endless forward momentum in part created by her TikTok virality and alignment with Gen Z culture. Tate McRae’s third studio album is still career defining—just not in the best way creatively. An inadvertently appropriate album title because we’re forced to wonder—what level of pop stardom is Tate McRae so close to?
Tate McRae quickly found traction when she broke onto the music scene with “You Broke Me First” in 2020. After releasing a couple EPs and winning various—some quite trivial—awards given to young artists, she released her highly anticipated debut studio album I Used to Think I Could Fly in 2022 to positive reception. A good start to a young pop career! I Used to Think I Could Fly was a piece of youthful exuberance and contemplation with strong songwriting and interesting pop elements. It’s a solid and straightforward teenage pop album with elements of pop punk. As a whole, it’s not too dissimilar to Olivia Rodrigo’s global smash debut Sour. The two albums were surely worked on at the same time, but perhaps there was a drawing of inspiration from Sour’s success. Not the worst thing to be compared to one of the best albums of this decade.
Things get interesting on Tate’s sophomore record Think Later in 2023. It was preceded by her biggest song to date “Greedy”, which became the apex of Tate’s blossoming career. At a point in her career when she released her biggest song ever—a title that still holds true to this day—she regressed in her ability to put together a collection of good songs. Say what you will about the current importance of album concept, the number of good songs so far in Tate’s discography dwarf in comparison to her pop contemporaries. Think Later lacks the substance in songwriting present on I Used to Think I Could Fly, but the gargantuan nature of “Greedy” and “Exes” is undeniable.
Which leads us to So Close To What. A further push towards the fact that beyond the standout massive pop hits, Tate McRae’s albums are filled with filler pop nonsense that lack cohesion, theme, or focus. The album’s closer “Nostalgia”, for example, is an attempt at a soulful acoustic closer, but the urge to add extra superfluous production elements couldn’t be resisted. What could’ve been a simple piece of contemplation is turned into a bloated acoustic-esque song.
Four tracks from this album were released as singles (“It’s OK I’m OK”, “2 Hands”, “Sports Car”, “Revolving Door”) compared to two off the last album—almost as if Tate and her team knew the deal. The people want the singles. The album is just business.
The singles are mixed in quality, but overall good. The quality-quantity ratio is probably the same as the singles from Think Later. The rest of So Close To What? Tinashe ass music (not a compliment). Pop folly.
The uninspiring production blends together on a lot of tracks and the writing is quite awful. On the “Purple lace bra” hook, we get an all-timer stinker of “Made all my inner thoughts sound like, ‘Ah, ah’”. What? There’s a sense that the colour purple was only chosen for its number of syllables because why is it so deeply the focus of this song? There are a group of songs on this album that do nothing because there doesn’t seem to have been any thought behind them. “Purple lace bra”, however, seems like there was thought put into it, but it was all very misguided. It’s supposed to be this sexy song about how sex is the only way to get her partner to listen to her. Sure, we get the sex part in the song, but it lacks the exploration into the deeper emotional parts of the song’s idea. It just rattles off various ways Tate can allure her partner, and how that’s the only way he’d listen. Might as well scrap everything but the first verse and chorus and repeat it three times.
“Sports car” is a decent single, but definitely the worst of the four. Something that should be pointed out is “golly gee”. What are we doing here?
There is one major non-single standout on the album—“Signs”. The production is interesting and the verses and choruses ebb and flow like its theme of wanting to give freedom to a partner, but also maintaining control of them. The key change in the last chorus switches things up to give one last nitrous oxide boost to finish the song. It’s clear that Tate McRae songs of this quality are possible, but it’s almost as if there wasn’t an attempt to make more “Signs”, or the creative team simply ran out of juice. The biggest artists, whether it be pop stars, rappers, bands, etc. have non-single hits that fans latch onto—songs that generate their own fanfare without a methodical push from the artist or the label. These are few and far between for Tate McRae. “Signs” may be the only one on this album, and there’s no certainty it won’t be released as a single, henceforth losing its organic popularity.
Tate McRae’s album discography and singles discography are on opposite paths. As she progresses in her career, she’s making bigger and flashier singles, while making progressively boring and monotone albums. Perhaps this is simply what’s destined for Tate—to work off of TikTok virality and build a career off of hits and live performances. After all, the streaming numbers aren’t affected by the lack of ingenuity. At time of publication, the worst songs on So Close To What have streaming numbers in the mid to high 10 millions. What’s eye-widening is the stark contrast to the streaming numbers of the biggest songs on the album. They’re ten to twentyfold.
Tate McRae hasn’t hit the heights expected of her young career yet, and she may never. These expectations are created so early in pop stars’ careers and they’re based on so little. The closest thing to a niche Tate fills in the pop sphere is perhaps dance and performance. Though the vocal performances aren’t really there, the live dance numbers and music videos are expertly crafted. In fact, you can probably ask a Tate McRae fan what they’re drawn to and they’d probably say it’s her dancing. Tate’s biggest songs are built for dance, TikTok, and YouTube choreographers. How sustainable this lane is, time will tell, but it’s clearly not affecting her now.
The Utility Spot 