Tate McRae - So Close To What

A lot of people have an awful lot to say about Tate McRae. She’s either the most exciting new pop star on the planet or she’s the totemic symbol of pop’s eternal nostalgia loop with her pitch-perfect songs redolent of Britney and Ciara and the golden age of Y2K pop. The reality is both of those can be true as Tate serves up classic sounds in a fresh package for a new generation of pop fans to discover their own new idol in real time.

‘So Close To What’ is Tate’s third album, but really, it’s the first in her big pop era. It’s sleek, immaculately refined and is a compelling collection of where she is right now in her pop evolution. And it doesn’t even have her breakthrough banger ‘Greedy’ on it, and it doesn’t even need it. Always a good sign.

What we do have are a number of slinky pop jams that obviously harken back to the sounds of people like Britney at her most conceptual and innovative, but they are filtered through a fresh contemporary prism that makes them pop and sparkle in vivid colour rather than a faded memory. ‘Miss Possesive’ is a killer opener, and tracks like ‘bloodonmyhands’ featuring Flo Milli and the swirling airiness of ‘Dear God’ and ‘Purple Lace Bra’ have a hypnotic and alluring quality to them that thrive within the album format.

For a major pop album there’s depth and dynamism here beyond big singles but also the sense that there's further to go and greater heights to reach. A lot of the time, like on stunning single ‘2 Hands’, Tate knocks it out of the park, but she could do with just a few more of those home runs.

It would be incorrect to suggest this is a breakthrough for Tate McRae as we’ve always known what a talent she was going back to her earliest songs way back in 2020. This is undoubtedly the sound of a new Tate McRae, though. Confident, assured and revelling in her pop dreams.