While the original overarching tone of Tate McRae’s third album, So Close to What, was largely one of amorousness and, well, being “Miss Possessive” when it came to holding on to the person who was making her feel so enamored (*cough cough* The Kid Laroi…once upon a time), the new tone, as evidenced by the five tracks McRae has added to the deluxe edition of the album, more urgently titled So Close to What???, is one that reads as far more merciless. Which is appropriate considering that the cliché about becoming rich and famous is that you have to, as Blair Waldorf said “be cold to be queen.” Gossip Girl-inspired advice that becomes immediately apparent on So Close to What??? thanks to McRae choosing to place the five new tracks at the very beginning and not, as most other pop stars do, “tacked on” at the end (indeed, apart from McRae, Tove Lo has been one of the few singers to do the “inverse track placement” with her deluxe edition of Sunshine Kitty [called the Paw Prints Edition]).
And the ilk she’s feeling especially cold toward are blokes who don’t treat her like the queen she sees herself as. McRae somewhat eases into the vitriol she feels for men (well, certain men) and relationships by opening So Close to What??? with “Trying On Shoes” (a song that, in title alone, could be Carrie Bradshaw’s anthem), which commences with a dramatic string arrangement, followed by the somewhat forlorn-sounding lines, “Don’t know what country I’m in/But I know how I’m feeling (my body’s always right).” After this moment, however, McRae pulls no punches on expressing her contempt for the opposite sex, singing, “I knew I must’ve dropped my diary in the pool for a reason (erased your every line)/Did you forget the kind of bitch with whom you’re dealing? (if so, I can remind)/Yeah, I can fall in love hard/Turn around and delete it.” That latter line echoes Sabrina Carpenter’s warning on “Good Graces,” “Boy, it’s not that complicated/You should stay in my good graces/Or I’ll switch it up like that so fast/‘Cause no one’s more amazin’ at turnin’ lovin’ into hatred.”
The same seems to go for McRae, who wastes little time in remaking So Close to What into a defiant “fuck you” to an ex even though, in its original form, it was all about the lustiness of falling in love (e.g., “I Know Love” featuring none other than The Kid Laroi) and the thrill of the chase (e.g., “Sports Car”). But a lot can change in the course of a year, as the chorus of “Trying On Shoes” emphasizes, with McRae languidly remarking, “Trying on shoes, putting on glitter/Anything to make me a little less bitter/Favorite blue, take a pretty picture/Got you like, ‘Fuck’/You’ll swear to God that I’m someone else.”
Co-written with Emile Haynie (known for his work on Lana Del Rey’s debut, Born to Die), Amy Allen (lately known for her work with Sabrina Carpenter on Man’s Best Friend) and Grant Boutin, McRae gets across the specifics of her beef with The Kid Laroi in such verses as, “You roll your eyes at all my shows/And God knows I see it (all I see is you)/I used to idolize you, baby/Took a year to reveal it (and the hard truth)/Is I’m not what you need, it’s hard to believe.” This while also speaking more generally by adding, “It’s hard to compete with someone I’m not/And someone that I’ll never be.” That someone being a girl that can stop (hence, “I can’t stop”)—whether this refers to her career ambitions or achieving the heights of her personal vendettas. As is also explored on “Anything But Love.” In fact, McRae gets even more to the point on this up-tempo track, opening with, “Listen/My dad hates you, my dog hates you, my brother hates you and I do too/I asked all of California, they all happy that you moved.” Something about that mirroring the sentiments of GAYLE pronouncing on “abcdefu,” “A-B-C-D-E, F you/And your mom and your sister and your job/And your broke-ass car and that shit you call art/Fuck you and your friends that I’ll never see again/Everybody but your dog, you can all fuck off.”
Fittingly, GAYLE did open for McRae during a 2022 tour called simply Tate McRae Live on Tour. But elsewhere during the song, McRae exudes her own brand of materialism-driven confidence (and also, again, a bit of Carrie Bradshaw’s) when she says, “Tryna step on my neck/I’m tryna step in Jimmy Choos.” Then there’s just a hint of Addison Rae on Charli XCX’s “von dutch remix” when the former sings, “While you’re sittin’ in your dad’s basement/Bet you’re disappointed that I’m shinin’/I’m just living that life.” In McRae’s version of that sentiment, it goes, “Sit at home, you see I’m good, you—/You mad as fuck, oh-oh/You say that I cashed out, well lucky me, it’s paying off.” That it is, especially with a “light rebranding,” of sorts, that aligns her position very much with the “Is Have a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” phenomenon. Something she promotes best on the second single to come out of the deluxe edition, “Nobody’s Girl”—which has, thus far, turned out to be the only one of the five new songs to get a music video accompaniment (not even “Tit For Tat” got one [and no, her “Live from Kia Forum” performance doesn’t count]). A sign that this song is of particular note to McRae, who continues on her “taunting an ex” journey by once more discussing her initial heartache after losing a boyfriend she now can’t stand. And, again, she also refers to being on tour when this happened (first alluded to on “Trying On Shoes” when she says, “Don’t know what country I’m in”), recalling, “And my heart was like an open sore/Saw like twenty healers when I was on tour.”
And what all these healers told her was that “everything I need I got/And the cherry on top/I am nobody’s girl.” Ergo, nobody’s fool. The sense of empowered confidence that McRae exudes throughout the song is what makes it stand out perhaps the most out of all five new ones added to the deluxe. Even if the song that follows, “Horseshoe,” has the same kind of “I’m so lucky” theme to it as well (for example, “So who am I to cry tonight?/Such a lucky girl, I know”). Indeed, those familiar with talismans of luck would immediately clock the word “horseshoe” as being associated with good fortune, something McRae acknowledges having anew with this song, even if it’s more in the vein of Britney Spears’ “Lucky” in that she occasionally views her so-called good fortune of being famous as a curse, particularly when grieving through a breakup (“Such a lucky girl, I know/But where should all my sadness go?/Baby, I’m upset, can’t you notice?”).
To be sure, her fame and success levels have escalated greatly since So Close to What was released in February, which is why the image (almost The Substance-esque in nature) of her splayed out in front of a broken Hollywood star—as though she herself shattered through it—has taken on a greater meaning in that McRae truly has shattered the conventional forms of becoming a Hollywood titan. With the braggadocio to match.
A trait she makes abundantly clear with her coup de grâce conclusion (which then marks the beginning of the “real” album), “Tit For Tat.” Once again “inspired by” (read: directly about) The Kid Laroi, McRae goes all in on changing the tone of what So Close to What originally radiated by infusing it with this batch of songs that give a better glimpse of where her head is at in the present. And maybe the best way to describe where it’s at is through her goading this (non-)“mysterious” ex on “Anything But Love” with her new-fangled version of “Why don’t you take a long walk off a short pier?” Or, as McRae puts it, “So take a walk, baby, make it long.”
As for McRae, she isn’t walking, so much as doing laps around the other pop stars of her generation who came up through less traditional channels at this moment in time. With possibly only Addison Rae (not McRae) offering similar game…especially on the choreo front.
