Tate McRae loves hockey. And singing. And dancing. She also loves her competitive family. She loves Calgary, but also Los Angeles, and she loves Love Island—the British version, not the U.S. knockoff. And writing, oh my God, she loves writing.
“I just had no idea how to actually communicate my feelings directly and no idea how to talk about them, whether it was with my family or friends,”says McRae, whose excitement is palpable, even over the phone. “Music was the only way that I could talk to people. I still feel that way. I think sometimes I feel like I float through life not really knowing what’s going on. Then as soon as I write a song about it, I have complete control and perspective over the situation.” She cowrote every single song on her second album, Think Later, including “Greedy,” which reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
McRae was born, and actually raised, to do this. She began her career as a dancer and took classes in Calgary, where she was trained by her mother, Tanja Rosner. “She’s the closest person to me, but when she was my dance coach, it was difficult,” McRae says. “She was my harshest critic, as I was myself, so sometimes lessons would get so intense because we would both be just going at it. When it’s your mom as your dance coach, there’s no filter.”
After success on the dance circuit and a third-place finish on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation, McRae started to build a social following. She released her first song, “One Day,” in 2017 on YouTube, where it has more than 40 million views. Two EPs, two albums, and a Saturday Night Live performance later, the Gen Z pop star has just embarked on her fourth headlining tour—career dreams turned reality.
“It’s always crazy, because once something happens, it happens so quickly,” McRae says. “All of a sudden, you are doing four performances back to back, and you’re on stages that you never thought you’d be on. I’ve just been trying to be as present as possible and take it all in.”
As she continues to break into the music scene, however, more emphasis gets placed upon her personal life. Paparazzi pictures of McRae are common occurrences now, and the media buzzes about whom she is dating. She’s learning how to deal with the scrutiny.
“It is really interesting because I think people are very hard on women, and they have been like that for the longest time ever,” McRae says. “All of my biggest idols got scrutinized for being a girl and got picked apart at everything they did and every single performance they put on. That’s frustrating to see, obviously. At the end of the day, we are still the same. We’re just making music because we love it and dancing because we love it and performing because we love it.”
On her process
“The way I write is the most disorganized. It is just complete train of thought. I’ve written so many half-written poems and random stories and a whole bunch of different journals and diaries. I also have this thing on my computer where, if I’m ever going through chaotic periods in my life, at the end of the day, I’ll just write down the first thing that comes to my brain. It’ll be just two pages of sometimes complete nonsense or sometimes something really beautiful. But it’s always so interesting to look back at and see the exact non-filtered version of how I felt after I went through an experience.
“I think there’s different phases of writing a song. Number one: story comes first. As long as I have the story and have the feeling that you want to get when you’re writing a song in the room, then that’s when I know I’ll love a song or not. Then usually afterwards, when we’re working on the production and we’re talking about the beat and the bass and how the room shakes when you play the song, there’s a specific feeling you want to get as a dancer. I feel like I kind of switch [to a dancer mentality] over once we start really diving in on the song.”
On her competitive family
“We are very competitive in all aspects of our life. I think it has kind of tamed down a little bit as we’re getting older, because now our lives are so serious. But, for the longest time, my brother and I went neck and neck with everything we were doing. If I was doing something, he was doing it more. If I was training, he was training harder. It was just constant back-and-forth kind of competition. He’s honestly one of my biggest inspirations, and I look up to him so much. Whenever I get to visit him and see him train and see him work at school, it always just makes me want to do better at my job.”
On her astrological sign
“I’m a cancer. I’m a super emotional person. I’m really sensitive to energies around me and feel like I’m also very observant. I’m constantly just taking everyone’s energy in.”
On her Saturday Night Live Performance
“It’s so crazy, because the month before I had written down in my journal, I’m going to perform “Greedy” on SNL. It was before Greedy had gotten released. It was really wild. Getting there, I was still processing that they had asked me. It was the best day of my life. I think I was just trying to take it all in and take in every single inch in detail of the room. I feel like that is every artist’s biggest dream in their career, to experience that. It just felt very magical.”
On her friendship with Olivia Rodrigo
“It’s amazing to have a friend that I can talk to about all of this who’s kind of going through the same thing that I am. I admire her so, so much. She is so beyond talented and intellectual. I think just surrounding yourself by a good group of girlfriends is very, very important...Surrounding yourself by good, inspirational, motivated people is the best way to go about life. You are the company you keep. ”
On performing at the NHL All-Star Game
“Performing in Canada was stressful. Performing at a hockey event was really, really, nerve-wracking, when you’re on stage, you’re on ice. That’s just not normal singing conditions. I was really nervous, but I had an absolute blast. It was just so cool to be backstage and see all the chaos going on and be able to take a piece home to my family and be like, this is what I just love doing. My brother, [who plays hockey], was kind of like, ‘There’s no way.‘ I had to do this NHL draft thing, where we had to pick teams. I would called him before, and he was helping me navigate through the players and who does what and who is who. He thinks the whole thing is hilarious.”
On what makes her Gen Z
“I’m so dramatic. I take everything to the farthest extent. If you’re in a bad mood, it’s the end of the world. Everything is emphasized by a million percent and I think that’s a very Gen Z thing to do. My mom’s generation just had a very, very tough skin and didn’t really complain about anything. But, I’m not really in on the TikTok lingo yet. There’s a very specific type of humor that lands on different sides of TikTok.”
On what she’d tell her younger self
“Trust yourself. I feel like every person always knows the right thing to do in the back of their head, and sometimes chooses to listen to other people. Whenever I’ve been skewed in the path that I didn’t want to be on, it’s because I didn’t truly listen to myself. I think I would tell younger Tate that she knows what she’s doing and she’s just got to believe in herself.”
A version of this story appears in the May 2024 issue of ELLE.
