Following a spree of successful singles, Tate McRae has dropped one of 2025’s most hotly anticipated pop records. On her third album, So Close to What, McRae seems to have found her niche as the good-time girl that pop music has been missing.
Originally known for her ballads with titles like ‘you broke me first’ from the EP TOO YOUNG TO BE SAD, McRae has recently broken away from sad girl pop and moved firmly into bad girl pop territory. Her early tracks such as ‘chaotic’ made perfect backdrops for emotional TikTok edits where young women juxtaposed images of themselves crying with images of them looking happy. But on So Close to What, McRae trades trite sentimentality for tongue-in-cheek lyrics about sex in sports cars, and the result is fantastic.
If you’ve followed McRae’s career over the past year, this reinvention won’t come as a surprise: the album’s lead single, ‘It’s ok I’m ok’, garnered attention for its music video in which she is arrested for public nudity.
The video, McRae explains, is inspired by pop videos of the early 2000s – “old Britney, old Christina” – and it’s easy to see this influence on the record and on McRae’s new image. ‘Sports car’, her latest single, has a deliciously dirty Y2K sound, bringing to mind Britney’s In the Zone. Its whispered chorus, where McRae stutters, “we can uh-uh in it”, is just so much fun.
The record is at its best and most playful, where it’s clear that McRae is having as much fun writing and recording these tracks as we are listening to them. ‘Signs’ has the makings of a future single: it’s a track that’s so characteristically Tate McRae, with a chatty, staccato verse that builds to an energetic chorus sang in her higher register. “If I need your sex like quick / said something and now I’m pissed / it’s like that or it’s like this”, she sings, her pouty delivery perfect against the sultry, moody instrumental.
‘Purple lace bra’ is already a fan favourite, its opening strings evoking Lana Del Rey’s ‘Born to Die’, as McRae asks if her “purple lace bra caught [our] attention?” It’s a cheeky, provocative image, symbolic of the album’s “just-turned-21” vibe. Its chorus, dark and seductive, is unfortunate in its similarity to contemporary Addison Rae’s ‘Diet Pepsi’, released in 2024, but it’s still an album highlight.
After an exciting first half full of banging club beats, the second half slows down a little, with more downtempo tracks like ‘Like I do’. This is McRae’s ‘Girl, so confusing’ — a track from Charli xcx’s 2024 album, Brat, in which Charli laments a complex friendship with friend and fellow artist, Lorde. On ‘Like I do’, McRae similarly bemoans a female friend who “just wanna do what [she] do”. In a voice note-style interlude, McRae sighs that she “can’t tell if [she] wanna kill me or if [she] wanna kiss me”. It makes for an interesting insight into McRae’s life away from boys and bars. Still, it’s unlikely to pop off virally in the same way that ‘Girl, so confusing’ did, as it’s regrettably a pretty dull and forgettable moment on a record with some genuinely top-shelf pop hits.
‘Greenlight’ is another downbeat, more introspective moment that pales in comparison to the album’s more fun and outrageous first half. It’s not that McRae should only be allowed to make pop bangers, or that she shouldn’t make music that expresses deeper emotions than wanting another shot of tequila and for a guy to leave her alone, but she doesn’t seem to be having much fun on these tracks. There isn’t much love in them, and it’s doubtful as to whether she will include moments like these on her upcoming tour over her more energetic and explosive dance numbers.
The record closes with ‘Nostalgia’ which is reminiscent of Dua Lipa’s ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ as another tonally mismatched ballad closing out an album of pop bangers. Backed by an acoustic guitar, McRae reflects on things that could have played out differently in her life and past relationships. It’s unfortunately a pretty unremarkable closer to a record that reached such soaring highs of pop greatness.
So Close to What is an incredibly promising record for McRae, who, with a little bit of polish and definition, has the potential to become one of the biggest stars of her generation. At only 21 years old, McRae already has numerous international top-ten singles under her belt, many of which have been produced by frequent collaborators Ryan Tedder and Grant Boutin. Considering how the album falls short of its initial promise, it would be intriguing to hear a McRae album made with different producers.
The record shines with its sexy and sleek club bangers, but its more downbeat and introspective moments fall short, and don’t provide much insight into McRae as an artist or a person. However, its standout tracks are so cleverly constructed that it’s easy to forget the weaker spots and focus on the jams. Some might dismiss McRae as an artist with little to say, but her ability to craft a track with a thumping beat and a dark and sultry synth make her a pop girl to watch.
Words by Imogen Fahey
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