Pop singers now share the dreaded algorithm so much it’s almost impossible to detect a shred of originality in anything you hear – mostly, one song melds into the other, and if you don’t recognise a distinctive voice (in the way that you know it’s by, say, Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo) you’ll keep skipping tracks until one comes along that grabs your attention. Some newish voices and their songs are actually so good you go back to them again and again. One such singer-songwriter is Tate McRae, whom many millions of teenagers turn to for solicitous relatability.
The 20-year-old Canadian isn’t as mournful as Eilish, and has nothing like the confessional, pumped-up style of Rodrigo. She fills a gap between the two by blending sleek R&B, slick hip hop and gentle piano ballads with turns of phrase that would make better-known songwriters wish they had thought of them first. So Think Later, which is her second album, looks certain to catapult her from theatres to arenas. Despite her 53 million-plus monthly listeners on Spotify, McRae isn’t there just yet – she first played Dublin in June 2022, at the Academy; in April she plays two nights at the 3Olympia Theatre – but it’s only a matter of time.
Think Later’s 14 songs are about falling in love and, her record label says, “embracing the raw emotions that you experience as a result of leading with your intuition and heart”. They all come in preteen “clean” versions, should anyone not want their children to hear the potty-mouth renditions – we wish parents nationwide the best of luck with that – and not everything works.
More than most, however, McRae sends direct, germane messages to her fans with excellent pop songs such as Greedy (“I see you eyein’ me down, but you’ll never know much past my name”), Stay Done (“I know we should break up, but I just can’t stay done with you ... We’re best friends and enemies”), Exes (“I swear I care a lot, just not enough”) and Messier (“Tell me something that I don’t know already, ’cos, baby, you can talk in circles for hours, make a good day sour”).
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Other songs might make less of an impact, but the album has plenty of earworms – and, crucially, there isn’t one tune you wouldn’t want to hear again.
