How Tate McRae Went From Dancing Queen to Singing Star
The 17-year-old Internet sensation explains to L’OFFICIEL why she feels older than her age and how she's coming to understand her own identity.
After joining Justin Bieber on stage for his Purpose World Tour as a backup dancer, appearing on the The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and placing third on So You Think You Can Dance, Tate McRae could have had a full career in a single art form. However, even as a 13-year-old, the creative polymath knew that she also wanted to cultivate her songwriting and singing abilities, as showcased on her YouTube channel, which now has over 3 million subscribers. But, as she recalls, despite plenty of initial interest in turning her into a pop star, it was difficult to convey her vision to those who saw her simply as one thing.
“I would bounce from label to label, and a lot of them told me I had to stop dancing if you want to do this,” McRae tells L’OFFICIEL. “That was a massive red flag for me.”
It’s an awareness that's rare in adults let alone a teenager. But McRae, who eventually signed with RCA, says she’s always had a strong sense of what she wants. Even now, while we wait out what feels like a forever COVID-19 lockdown, she’s learning to balance the time and expectations that come with releasing music. “It's non-stop. Because you can do everything in one day, you do it,” she says. “It's definitely been a hard process to figure out and nail down being in isolation.” If that sounds like a case of being wise beyond her years, know that the singer has heard that tired phrase before.
“I've gotten that since I was 11,” she laughs. “I've just always been that child that spent a lot of time around adults when I was younger...I feel like I am super observant of everything everything around me, and I think that makes me a little wise beyond my years. People say I'm like a 40-year-old in a 17-year-old's body.”
As a self-described Twitter Grandma, McRae also can’t get behind her generation’s relationship with social media. From waxing poetic on landlines (“You picked up the phone to call someone, and everyone else in your in your house could listen—that whole idea that is so fascinating!”) to the way it’s facilitated lazy interactions, she’s more interested in maintaining a certain level of privacy than collecting followers. “Which is ironic because I'm a public figure,” McRae laughs. It’s also the reason she’s not terribly interested in discussing the meaning behind her songs.
“The cool thing about writing is that you can write anything you want, and no one ever has to know what you were thinking,” she says. “It's almost that you can't give yourself away, and I think that's just a part of human nature. If you do give yourself away, there's gonna be nothing left for yourself. And I need that for my own sanity sometimes.”
Her explorations can run deep—as was the case with her Billboard charting single, “You Broke Me First,” a downbeat ballad where McRae addresses an emotionally distant ex, desperate to get back together despite cheating. While the track might have fueled a few rumors, she makes it clear that at 17, she’s still got plenty of living to do before writing from her own experiences.
“It's funny because everyone always thinks it's about one dude who seriously broke my heart,” she explain. “But I've never gone through a heartbreak before. I feel like at my age, I have to do that a lot. I have to grab from anything I see and experience and put myself in other people's perspectives, because I've only experienced 17 years of life. There's only so much I can grab from of my own! I’ll pick up on people's energies and I can read a room, and I can feel every single person and put it on my back.”
McRae’s new single “Slower,” is another example of the artist’s ever-changing approach to music. While the lyrics are likely to resonate with turmoil-filled 17-year-olds (“I'm going through changes/It's a roller-coaster/But I might be somebody/You might not even know her”), she wrote the song at 14 during one of her first co-writing sessions. It wasn’t until it was revived, that the artist realized it still spoke to her.
“I hated it at first,” she admits, explaining she rewrote some lyrics and reproduced some of the orchestration. “Now it's completely come to life again. I get very defensive on what I want to put out, because I feel like I have a very good grasp on which songs connected with me and will connect with my fans. I really had to have an open mind for this song, because I was really closed off at first, thinking that 14-year-old me didn't know what she was talking about.”
Like anyone moving through their teen years, McRae admits that she’s changed a lot. She recently graduated from high school, was nominated for a Juno for Breakthrough Artist of the Year, and has even been called Canada’s answer to Billie Eilish. (Having worked with Eilish on “Tear Myself Apart,” she’s a fan.) Now she has a new 6-track EP, Too Young to be Sad, slated to drop tomorrow, which features two brand new songs alongside her singles "You Broke Me First," "Slower," "R U OK," and "Rubberband." But even as the attention to her work grows, creativity continues to be a refuge. That’s something that she doesn’t see changing.
“I don't want to be anyone else when I'm dancing, which is a really really good feeling,” McRae says. “Dancing has just been such a huge part of my life. Same with music. I would never let go of it just as much as music, even if I'm doing singing more now. I will never let go of it until the day that I die.”
