Concluding her Miss Possessive world tour on Nov. 8, pop-princess Tate McRae closed this chapter with the release of her deluxe album “SO CLOSE TO WHAT???” on Nov. 20.
Joining the tracklist alongside her most recent singles are “TRYING ON SHOES,” “ANYTHING BUT LOVE,” “NOBODY’S GIRL” and “HORSESHOE.”
Diversifying the strand of upbeat dance music in “SO CLOSE TO WHAT???,” “TRYING ON SHOES” opens with cinematic violin and harp strings that create an entirely new atmosphere — no less melancholic than it is sultry and not unlike those of Lana Del Rey’s. Sensual and meditative, McRae layers call-and-responses with her lyrics. “Don’t know what country I’m in, but I know how I’m feelin’” is followed by a whispered “My body’s always right.” Creating a dialogue with an ex, she asks, “Did you forget the kind of b***h with whom you were dealing?” and answers with a composed, “If so, I can remind.” McRae can be emotional by deed, but rational by word, lending herself a human duality.
Finally, she sings, “You roll your eyes at all my shows, and God knows I see it” to add an “All I see is you.” From a confrontational and superior tone addressed to a specific spectator, she then diverts to helplessly admit that she is always looking for that person in the crowd anyway.
Referencing the deluxe album’s cover art and lyric video, she sings, “Favorite blue, take a pretty picture.” With McRae draped across a deserted landscape and blue clouds in the background, McRae frames the deluxe album with this lonely and ruminative story.
This curated persona has new habits as well. Choosing to involve the glamor in her work, she describes her coping mechanisms with a tone of dreamlike resignation: “Tryin’ on shoes, puttin’ on glitter / Anything to make me a little less bitter.” Often with stars, consumerism and vanity go hand in hand as self-prescribed compensation to fill an emotional void. McRae is clearly no exception and she acknowledges it.
In “ANYTHING BUT LOVE,” Tate McRae’s self-proclaimed stage persona, Tatiana, brags about her success, namedrops her producer Ryan Tedder and follows with unfiltered digs in quick contemptuous tones. Lines like, “You see my name on billboards, on skyscrapers, on monster trucks” alternate with a blunt, “My fans hate you, my friends hate you, and Ryan hates you, and I do too” and a sharp accusation of social-climbing in, “Yeah, I know that you want / That upper echelon / But we know that you don’t make that cut.” Such aggressive and anthemic lyrics are sure to evoke riotous call and response between her and stadium crowds.
McRae shifts from asserting dominance to celebrating her independence in “NOBODY’S GIRL.” From lyrics such as, “Money drop in New York City” to, “Look in the mirror and I’m like / ‘So hot, so smart, so witty,’” the track’s pride matches the artist’s success. To validate such pride, she admits that it came with hardships: “And my heart was like an open sore / Saw, like, twenty healers when I was on tour.” Specifically, she traces her troubles back to men in a play on words with her lyrics, “And when I cry, gotta wonder why every tear’s in the shape of mankind.” In metaphor, McRae processes this hurt by singing, “when I ask, the angels sing / They say, ‘real love doesn’t clip your wings.’” With that in mind, McRae can lightly conclude, “At twenty-two, it’s a little sad / But it’s fun.”
With “HORSESHOE,” McRae paints a picture of how stardom can suffocate rather than liberate the star, working through references to her own past music and Britney Spears’ song “Lucky.” For McRae, the challenge lies in navigating heartache during her tour. In more intimate notes that emphasize the irony, McRae states that she’s, “Got twenty thousand people just smiling” but she also “Just broke down on the plane.” She realizes, “I got a horseshoe around my neck / Lot of angels that stay close,” a metaphor for her fortune and fame restricting her to isolation, especially when she questions, “So who am I to cry tonight?” and cannot find an answer.
With a sarcastic, “Such a lucky girl, I know” and an honest, “I’m not a pop star when I’m all alone,” McRae evokes the chorus in Spears’ “Lucky,” which follows a girl who “cries in her lonely heart, thinking / ‘If there’s nothing missing in my life / Then why do these tears come at night?’”
McRae also uses the bridge to continue the story from her track “Siren sounds (bonus)” about a toxic relationship between a couple that refuses to break up, regardless of its inevitability. In “Siren sounds (bonus),” she uses a metaphor of a couple who “keep living in a burning house” because they “both love the smoke” to describe this dynamic. Picking back up the story in “HORSESHOE,” McRae adds, “I know the house burned down, but I finally saw the moon / Oh, but I’m still f***ed up by you, you, you.”
A consensus has developed among fans and critics that Tate McRae is this generation’s Britney Spears. Audiences have arrived at this sentiment due to McRae’s subject matter, production style and choreography. McRae also made choices in her music video for “it’s ok, i’m ok” that pay homage to Spears’s “I Wanna Go” and recycled her red carpet look at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs).
Now, McRae has made a direct reference to her predecessor in her deluxe album. More importantly though, McRae used “SO CLOSE TO WHAT???” to process and leave behind whatever struggles weighed her down on tour, focusing instead on what clearly inspires her to continue.
Carmen Lin is an Arts & Entertainment Intern for the fall 2025 quarter. She can be reached at carmnml@uci.edu.
Edited by June Min and Joshua Gonzalez
