Image: Conor Cunningham

At just 20 years old, Canada’s Tate McRae is quickly shaping up to be one of the most important artists in the next generation of talent making waves in the music industry. She has just cemented her star potential with the release of her second album Think Later.

The album caps off what has been McRae’s biggest year to date. Her September single ‘Greedy’ became a massive worldwide hit and saw McRae achieved a number of firsts, including her first number 1 single in her home country, as well as her first top 10 hit in the USA and her highest charting single in Australia and the UK. The follow up single ‘Exes’ trod a single path, hitting the top 40 in the US and top 20 in the UK and Australia within its first three weeks of release.

Executive produced by Ryan Tedder (Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Blackpink), all 14 tracks were co-written by McRae and feature writing and production collaborations with Amy Allen (Harry Styles, Justin Bieber), Jasper Harris (Doja Cat, Post Malone), Greg Kurstin (Adele, Pink), ILYA (Ellie Goulding, Sam Smith), Savan Kotecha (Ariana Grande, The Weeknd) and more.

On McRae’s first album, 2022’s I Used To Think I Could Fly, her music in the main leant into guitar pop-rock and stripped back indie ballads, infused with a dash of contemporary pop. On Think Later her sound has evolved further into the pop realm, but bringing in diverse influences from hip-hop to trap alongside synth and electronica. Lyrically, McRae remains as honest and relatable as she has always been, with the songs confronting heartbreak, betrayal, love, and the challenges we all confront as we progress from a teenager into an adult, with McRae saying the album represents how she now chooses to live her life: “a little less with my head and a little more with my intuition.”

The album opens with ‘Cut My Hair’, a moody R&B track that talks of McRae wanting to change everything about her to attract her crush: “Just wanna show you whatever she do, I can do it better.” There is also a reference to McRae’s past work and perhaps a desire to move on from the heart-rending ballads such as ‘You Broke Me First’ that defined the earlier years of her career: “Couple years back, so sensitive…Singing about the same old stupid ass things / Sad girl bit got a little boring.”

‘Hurt My Feelings’ is a brash, pop-hip hop track with an infectious ‘na-na-na’ refrain that delves into similar lyrical territory as ‘Cut My Hair’ with McRae wanting someone unobtainable so bad that it hurts. It is followed by the first pared back moment on the album ‘Grave’, an absolute highlight, allowing one of McRae greatest strengths - her plaintive, emotive vocals - to shine. She sings of realising how toxic a relationship was only after stepping back from it. “I went through this whole year of the push and the pull of loving and hating this relationship and being stuck in the whirlwind of it all and being very infatuated with all of it,” she said on the album release. “I couldn’t get myself out of this hole. Everyone was telling me I was literally just batshit crazy for thinking that it was so great.” The track begins as a gentle ballad before it builds and builds with synths and electronic beats before dialling it back again at the end as McRae closes with the lyric “You can only try to save something that's not already gone.”

‘We’re Not Alike’ is a return to the more guitar based sound prominent on her earlier hits like ‘She’s All I Wanna Be’. Lyrically it speaks of a friendship falling apart as McRae realises a girlfriend has betrayed her: “Said she had my back but she had the knife / I could never do it once and she did it twice.”

‘Calgary’ is a melancholic, country-tinged pop ballad that sees McRae look fondly on the hometown that at one point she only wanted to leave, while ‘Messier’ is a electronic-synth track and again sees McRae honestly look at a relationship that is simply fire meeting with fire, making the relationship messier than the two component parts, despite McRae being irrevocably in love. At almost 4 minutes, it is the longest track on the album and also one of the best. It is emotional, raw, heartfelt with gorgeous lyrics and a mesmerising soundscape.

The album ends with ‘Plastic Palm Trees’ which in many ways is a companion song to ‘Calgary’ as it explores McRae’s relationship with the city she moved to after leaving Calgary - Los Angeles. “LA can come across as a perfect place, and there’s a lot of business that people don’t talk about,” McRae said on the album’s release. “Coming from a town like Calgary was just a bit of a culture shock. I began experiencing a place filled with a lot of different personalities and characters.” It is a mellow, electronic track with both the sound and McRae’s vocals perfectly portraying the melancholy of achieving your dream, but finding out it was not as perfect as you thought: “You could say that all my dreams came true / What an oh-so-lonely view…It's not what it seems.”

Think Later is a magnificent album that shows McRae possesses one of the main ingredients it takes to be a long term, global superstar - the ability to evolve, mix up her sound and explore new things while still remaining true to who she is an artist. Everything we first fell in love with McRae for - the raw lyrics, the beautifully unique voice, the powerful songs - are all here in droves but she is wrapping them in a new sound as well as exploring new lyrical territory: as she says herself, the ‘sad girl’ Tate McRae isn’t as strongly in evidence here, yet we have something better, a confident, assured performer who knows how to have fun as well as wear her heart on her sleeve. An end of year musical highlight, and with an Australian and New Zealand tour happening at in November next year, expect 2024 to be an even bigger year for this incredible artist.

Think Later is out now via RCA Records/Sony Music Australia. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Tate McRae, you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter.
Read our six page interview with Tate McRae in issue 12 of Women In Pop magazine.