Canadian singer-songwriter Tate McRae released third studio album “So Close To What” on February 21, 2025 via RCA Records.
It is her first album in two years since the 2023 album “Think Later”.
The album comprises 15 songs, featuring guest appearances from American rapper Flo Milli and Australian rapper The Kid Laroi.
Produced by Blake Slatkin, Emile Haynie, Grant, ILYA, LOSTBOY, Rob Bisel, Ryan Tedder and Tyler Spry.
The album navigates the raw emotions of healing an old heart and the hesitations that come with falling in love again, the beautiful and sometimes harsh realities of what it means to be a woman and embracing a newfound confidence.
Tate McRae told Vogue about the album title, “I liked the fact that it had a bit of an ambiguous meaning to it. It did feel like it could be connected to the sexier songs and the flirtier songs on the album, especially because I’m talking about that in a much bolder way than I have before. While I was writing the album, I was on tour, living the same day over and over again. It felt like I was trying to change, but I couldn’t quite... I was feeling grown up for the first time, but I’m still 21, which was confusing. I really felt like a woman for the first time-feeling confident about my sexuality and empowered-but then some days waking up and feeling sexualized in a way I didn’t enjoy, and feeling very misunderstood. I felt very conflicted, and like a walking contradiction, and So Close to What perfectly summed that up.”
She told Apple Music about writing session, “With music and finding perspective on situations, no one quite understands like another girl. You need another girl to know exactly what we’ve gone through and to know what it actually feels like in order to write a song. When you’re in a writing session, you have to be one brain together, and if it’s not that, that’s when chaos happens. It is so liberating to be with other girls and talk about things that are so frustrating and then feel so satisfied and accomplished after.”
Tate McRae explained about some tracks for the album.
“Miss possessive” via Vogue “I knew that sound was exactly where I wanted to go—it was heavily influenced by early Aaliyah and early 2000s R&B and those very repetitive melodies. I started from this initial idea of knowing that I wanted to create a dark pop sound, and something really danceable.”
“2 hands” “'2 hands' shows a different side of me than what people are used to. The song captures the feeling of falling in love and how sometimes just being close to someone is all you really need. A genuine connection goes beyond needing constant reassurance or fancy things, simply being together is what matters. I honestly just love the song and it’s my first time writing a loveish song so I feel like it’s cool. I’m really excited for fans to hear it, they’ve been waiting for years.”
“Revolving door” “'Revolving door' was initially started as a love song and feeling like you’re stuck in this revolving door of a relationship and regardless of what you do in your life and how you change, I keep coming back to this person. And then I realized, ‘cause I wrote the bridge a different day, I went on my own and just wrote the bridge, and I realized that it wasn’t just a relationship song, it was literally about my inability to make decisions and my inability to change and kinda feeling like I was in this cycle not only in relationships but in my life, of staying the same person and never feeling stable on one thing. So, the bridge is one of my favorite parts of that song 'cause I had literally just done a performance it talks about like, 'Supposed to be on stage but fuck it, I need a minute/Supposed to be an adult but fuck it, I need a minute,’ like, everything needs to stop for one second so I can screw my head on straight and realize who I am, 'cause everything felt like it was moving a million miles an hour.”
“Dear god” “I don’t do very well with boredom so whenever I finish a show I can go to the studio the next day and write again, maybe ‘cause it’s just like a therapeutic thing for me so I need it but 'Dear god’ was so fun. I had booked three days with Julia Michaels and I had no idea if we needed anything on the record and then I ended up writing majority of the songs on the record, which was so interesting. But ‘Dear god’ was just initially we were just like, ‘Let’s write a fun, sexy song, dance song,’ and then we ended up realizing it was so heartbreaking that feeling of desperation of being like, ‘To some higher power, this is the last thing that I can call on for me to forget this person, you’re my last hope.’ It was kinda fun to use all those visuals of sitting on the side of your bed and praying to forget a person.”
“Purple lace bra” “'Purple lace bra,' I actually was on a, I had taken my first break of the year on tour, and I had written in my diary, I was sitting in front of the ocean, and I had written in my diary like, ‘Would you hear me more if I acted like this? Would you hear me more if I was?’ And I was like, ‘What does that mean? What am I feeling right now?’ And what I realized that I was feeling after being on tour all year and after seeing so many videos of my face and my body and just everything, I felt like my relationship with the media had been really fucked up in my brain, being like sometimes feeling like the most, you know, craziest clips would be of me dancing. And then you just see people put all their opinions on it. And then I’d be like, Okay, but you’re missing the point of the show or you’re missing 95% of the show or you’re missing the point of the song,‘ and I just sometimes felt like people weren’t hearing me. And they were just like looking at me and making an assumption and they weren’t hearing me. And then I feel like I released a music video and also just experienced for the first time me being like, 'Oh, this is, felt like just art to me,’ I was looking at the camera shots and the lighting and the dancing and the feeling of it. And then you see another person who just, like, takes it in a completely different way as a girl. And I was just like, ‘Oh, like, wow, I’m really frustrated. Because I feel like I’m getting nowhere with this, and no one’s actually understanding what I’m trying to say.’ And so this song was kind of just, we kind of took it into a relationship, me and Amy Allen, of being like, ‘Would you hear me more if I talked to you? We’re having sex.’ And it was a really interesting concept to tap into, to be like, ‘I’ve been giving you everything and I’ve been telling you everything and you’re still not hearing me, so how can I make it so you finally hear me?’ So it was like, it’s so funny because it’s such a sensual song, but really, like, heartbreaking.”
“Sports car” via Vogue
“This was such a fun song to write. I wrote it with Julia Michaels, Ryan Tedder, and Grant and we wanted to kind of capture the adrenaline of love, sex, and the excitement of it all. I felt like a sports car reminded me of that feeling of love, and like you are right in the middle of it. We referenced the Ying Yang twins with the whisper chorus and it ended up being really fun. This was the most difficult video to move in because I wanted to honor the pieces and make sure that the outfits laid well and looked good. But in some shots I was wearing six to eight inch platform heels where I was like this is actually impossible to stand in. I’m such a sneakerhead so for me to walk around in heels is an issue. And for one of the scenes, I had to be in heels and a chair. Learning where to put my weight and where to put my pelvis to be able to dance with heels while also balancing and moving quickly is such a skill.”
“It’s ok I’m ok” “I'm so beyond excited to share “It's ok I'm ok” with the world and this new chapter of my music. This song is a byproduct of reflecting back on past relationships to now and how much I've grown and learned from them. It's a playful take on knowing your worth and the all too relatable feeling of never wanting someone back.”
“Nostalgia” “I think I’ve always been a really old soul. Like when I was 14, I felt like I was like, I’ve lived a million lives. Maybe I’ve lived a lot of past lives, I don’t know. But I’m just a big like sit by myself and observe and people watch and think about life for hours kind of person. And I was talking with my father, because I do this thing at dinners where I’ll like ask a million questions and be like, ‘What was your biggest regret in life?’ Or ‘What was the one thing you wish you could do?’ Which is so obnoxious. And he was just like, ‘Oh, I wish I could have been an architect.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God, you’ve been doing your job for like 25 years now, 30 years now,’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I wish I would have done that,’ Just like, ‘Wasn’t at the time, like didn’t seem like the best thing to do,’ and I was just like, ‘Ah, damn.’ Like, and he said to me, he was like, ‘And that’s why when I raised you, like, I just wanted to make sure anything you did, regardless of how risky or scary it was, it was always something you wanted to do,’ Like this career is the most unstable thing of all time. And you never know what’s gonna happen. And my mom and my dad just kinda like let me do my thing cause they were like, you can’t live with regrets. And that’s what kinda sparked that song, was just sometimes realizing that you’re just like so not in the moment of things and that you missed out on so many things in life and people in life and memories.”
