With her gigantic new single, 'Girlfriend', CATE's ready to join the Big Pop party. Check out the latest cover story for our New Music Friday playlist edit The Cut.

Words: Abigail Firth.
Photos: Em Marcovecchio.

"Rat, rat, frog. I think you could be a hybrid?" Cate is letting everyone in the Dork studio know if they're a rat or a frog. "Oh, I'm a frog," she assures.

She's just gotten off tour with her bestie and housemate, Maisie Peters, where the pair of them have been given knitted rats as gifts. It's a bit that started in their friend group a few years ago that fans have latched on to: everyone is either a rat or a frog.

Unfortunately, none of the rats have made it with her to the studio today, which is our tiny setup in Brighton amidst The Great Escape. Cate's making a quick stop in the city to play the festival for the first time before jetting off to Nashville the following week. Annoyingly for Cate, her set clashes with Maisie's.

Touring the UK with Maisie has already warped Cate's idea of the average tour – it was a bestie fest with the pair's bands already very familiar with one another; she says it felt like a big school sleepover – but it wasn't her first time at the rodeo.

Born in Canada, Cate grew up in a farm town outside of Vancouver and spent her teen years playing in a country band and literally playing rodeos at 15 (her yeehaw tendencies remain, she shows up today in a jumper with a horse motif and her blonde hair in two braided pigtails). She moved to the UK just before the pandemic hit, initially to write for other people, but when COVID came around, she found herself releasing her own music.

"I wanted to do my own project once I stopped doing country music in Canada, but I didn't think I would do it right away," she explains. "I was writing for other people, and I thought I would do that for maybe a year or two, then start releasing my own stuff, but because of COVID, I was living with another songwriter and a producer, so it kind of worked out that we wrote a whole bunch of stuff together, and then I put it out. I'm glad that we did because it's a very wholesome way to put out music."

Although currently living with Maisie and another friend who's studying for her master's degree (and ten knitted rodents), she moved in with fellow Canadian and one-half of Tommy Lefroy, Tessa Mouzourakis, when she first got here.

Her household throughout her childhood was less musically focused, though. She describes her parents as tone deaf, and most of her talent came from her grandad – who could pick up any instrument and play it – and Disney Channel.

"He would always put on Dolly Parton songs, and he'd get the instrument that day and play it and then make me learn, which was really nice. So he was always making music. Yeah, that and I watched a lot of Hannah Montana.

Those influences have carried over way into her adulthood. Cate still covers 'Rock Star' by Hannah Montana on tour (and dons a blonde fringed haircut similar to Miley's wig herself) and says she and Maisie have a Taylor Swift prayer candle at their gaff.

Releasing her debut EP 'Love, The Madness' in 2020, which was made up of DIY tracks she'd recorded in lockdown, her music evolved into something much richer by the time this year's 'Tell Me Things You Won't Take Back' came around in February. It pulls heavily from the breezy country pop of early Taylor Swift and current girl-powered country of Maren Morris, Kacey Musgraves and Kelsea Ballerini; her biggest track 'Groupie' is surprisingly comparable to 'If We Were A Movie' from the Hannah Montana soundtrack.

She hung onto that EP for a year before releasing it, but now she's chasing something more spontaneous. 'Get Better' came out in April and is, in her words, much happier than her previous work. Written with Ines Dunn (also a hitmaker for Maisie Peters and Mimi Webb), 'Get Better' and new single 'Girlfriend' are big bops.

Foraying drastically into sadbanger territory on 'Girlfriend', it's the kind of 80s pop that'd do Carly Rae Jepsen proud; her 'High Horse' in the middle of 'Golden Hour' moment.

"With 'Girlfriend', I had that line, I was like, 'Oh my god, it's like he really wants a girlfriend, but he doesn't', and then we wrote it in like 20 minutes, and it's just a lot of trauma, it's such a dance song, but it's just like the saddest thing. I love 'Stayaway' by Muna; that's one of my favourite songs ever, so I just really wanted something like that.

It's one of the songs she's most looking forward to playing on her upcoming October tour ("Not to knock Canada, but it's just so different than over here, like, UK audiences are not shy," she says) because she's now got a good chanty song for the British crowds.

For now, she's going with the flow, and we can expect more singles from Cate as the year goes on. Right now, she's on her way to the Mecca of country music, Nashville, Tennessee, hoping to tick off another childhood goal of visiting Dollywood. Saddle up, pop world; there's a new sheriff in town. ■