The cover of Tate McRae's third album shows the pop spitfire lounging on a floor, her back turned to the viewer as she gazes at a floor-to-ceiling portrait of herself in profile — head thrown back, eyes closed, holding a facial expression that seems like she's on the verge of doing something. That sort of self-scrutiny is common for the 21-year-old singer, who recently told Rolling Stone that she has a "never-ending loop" of thoughts on her self, her success, and her satisfaction. Her perpetual-motion mind has made her one of pop's most exciting young stars, and it fuels So Close To What, a sleek, fast-moving collection of darkly hued pop confections.
McRae crash-landed into pop's upper tier in 2020 with "you broke me first," a smoldering kiss-off to a poorly behaving ex with diaristically detailed lyrics. A showcase for the Calgary-born McRae's trembling, taut voice, "broke" established her as someone who could report from the frontlines of young love and lust with gimlet-eyed clarity and repeat-listen-worthy passion. In the years since, McRae's sound and ambition have grown, as has her sense of playfulness; "greedy," the pumping 2023 track from her second album THINK LATER that became her first U.S. top-ten hit, spins out of clattering steel drums, while the bad-bestie takedown "we're not alike," from the same record, balances McRae's purr on a blown-out bassline.
So Close To What, which McRae began working on shortly after THINK LATER's release, continues McRae's upward trajectory, its tightly wound songs charting their own course through 2025's chaotic pop landscape. "Sports car" sculpts synth squelches and grinding-gears rhythms into hooks, McRae's whispered come-ons acting as the connective tissue; "Revolving door" has a runaway-train beat that underscores her pleading "I need a mine." Lyrically, McRae's poison pen has grown sharper while her lyrics have become slightly more terse: The Flo Milli-assisted "bloodonmyhands" pairs its skipping UK garage beat with apologia like "Yeah I move as fast as I can/And I know it fucks you up so hard," while "Purple lace bra," a swirling 21st-century update of Madonna's sullen "Bad Girl," includes the lacerating grouse "I’m losing my mind/Cause giving you head’s/ The only time you think I got depth."
The album also has another, newer element: Happiness, or something near it. McRae's boyfriend, the Australian singer-MC The Kid LAROI, makes a cameo on "I know love," a sweet recounting of their relationship; the lusty "2 hands" is a show-don't-tell throwdown to someone who thinks jewels and bags can supply the same sort of contentment as touch. When the latter came out in November, McRae told the British radio station Capital that it was "kind of like my first ever love song I guess I've ever written, which is crazy." McRae's vision of love is, perhaps unsurprisingly, riddled with introspection and angst; "If I cut you off/ It just means I care," she coos on the handclap-propelled "Means I care." But her ability to dig into those intricacies and turn them into arena-worthy singalongs makes So Close To What a pop album worth digging into.
