So Close To What

About

Canadian multi-hyphenate Tate McRae has barely stopped to take a breath since kindergarten: The 21-year-old began intensive dance training at age six, scored a record deal at 16, and tied for top nominee for the 2025 JUNO Award. Her third studio album arrives just a few months after the end of her 2024 world tour in support of her sophomore album, 2023’s <i>THINK LATER</i>. “Being on tour for a year feels like a million years—you’re like, ‘Holy shit, I have been gone for a lifetime,’” McRae tells Apple Music, though naturally she used the time as a learning opportunity. “Being onstage every night and analyzing yourself that much, you become uber-aware of yourself and what’s going on.” She began paying closer attention to exactly what kind of songs inspired her to move, what beats triggered her dancers to get—in a word—“nasty.” <i>So Close to What</i> is not exactly a club record—more like a pop record you can viscerally feel, conducive to the kind of choreo that makes a killer stage show. Prominent on McRae’s mood board were Timbaland and The Neptune, whose kinetic productions made the aughts feel like the future. Echoes of sparkly, club-friendly 2000s R&B abound: “bloodonmyhands” recruits Flo Milli for a Miami bass throwback, while “Purple lace bra” lands somewhere between The-Dream’s <i>Love v. Money</i> and Lana Del Rey’s <i>Born to Die</i> (which checks out, given the latter album’s producer, Emile Haynie, among the credits). And on “Sports car,” McRae and co-writer Julia Michaels found unlikely inspiration in a 2005 crunk classic. “[Michaels] had been dying to reference the Ying Yang Twins’ ‘The Whisper Song,’ and I was like, ‘That’s crazy,’” she say. Sure enough, the concept worked. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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