{"id":168818,"date":"2025-12-05T02:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T02:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/168818\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T02:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T02:46:08","slug":"tate-mcrae-looks-back-on-her-non-stop-year-of-touring-and-performing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/168818\/","title":{"rendered":"Tate McRae Looks Back on Her Non-Stop Year of Touring and Performing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTate McRae is ready<\/a> to take a breath. Since releasing her chart-topping third album, \u201cSo Close to What,\u201d in February, the 22-year-old has been on an unstoppable tear, dropping insta-viral music videos and trotting the globe on her 83-date \u201cMiss Possessive\u201d arena tour. Just days before she brought the trek to a close at Los Angeles\u2019 Kia Forum in November, she caught up with Variety over Zoom from her hotel room, reflecting on the tireless run that\u2019s elevated her from budding pop star to major pop contender.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m ready to hermit for a second,\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cI\u2019m just realizing as I\u2019ve been on tour this
year how much my personality has changed and how much I feel like I\u2019ve grown up and how my interests have changed. It\u2019s so funny because I\u2019ve been on this tour that\u2019s felt so extroverted, and I\u2019ve become completely introverted. And I\u2019m so blessed that it was so incredible, but I\u2019m ready to put a pin in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tUnderstandably so, as McRae started the year with \u201cSo Close to What,\u201d an album that brushed off the more introspective fare of past albums in favor of a nostalgic yet sharp sound. Armed with a team of songwriting brass including Ryan Tedder, Amy Allen and Julia Michaels, the project leaned into the crisp aesthetic of millennium-era pop (think Pussycat Dolls and Nelly Furtado) and swiftly became her first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. For McRae, the refocus on hard-nosed pop came in service of her live performance \u2014 high-energy spectacles with heavy emphasis on choreography, as she\u2019s a trained dancer \u2014 that countered her instincts as an artist.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHow I write music is really depressing, sad songs. And that\u2019s where my heart and soul is in music,\u201d she says. \u201cSo it was such a challenge to be like, \u2018OK, scratch all that. How the fuck do I write a song like \u201cSports Car\u201d and take my brain into another space and push myself?\u2019 I was tapping into a lighter alter ego, a more confident, empowered side that I think sometimes I don\u2019t feel in my own body.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven on tour, McRae didn\u2019t waste a moment. She wedged a show-stopping performance of her hit \u201cRevolving Door\u201d at the MTV VMAs between September tour dates and duetted with Morgan Wallen on the Hot 100-topping \u201cWhat I Want.\u201d Her single \u201cJust Keep Watching,\u201d off the \u201cF1\u201d soundtrack, picked up a Grammy nomination for best dance pop recording in November.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut as McRae\u2019s star began to rise, so did the interest in her as a public figure. A deceptively edited video of her singing into an upside-down microphone on tour spawned countless headlines that she lip-synchs live, something she strongly refutes (\u201cI was like, \u2018That\u2019s so frustrating \u2014 why is this on ABC News?\u2019\u201d). Her breakup with rapper the Kid Laroi was a social media talking point, and speculation flew that \u201cTit for Tat,\u201d recorded during an off day on the road and released as a precursor to the deluxe edition of \u201cSo Close to What,\u201d was a direct reference to the split.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI just felt a very strong urge to express myself,\u201d she recalls of recording the song. \u201cThat was the one week that I felt the most emotionally bottled up. I was like, I must speak about this right now and write a song. Talking about something so fresh and then releasing it to the world was a very vulnerable and exposing thing. It was really scary for me. But as long as I can take any emotion or feeling and put it into a song and help anybody else if they feel similarly, that\u2019s all I can do, I suppose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAll the sudden attention is why McRae has learned to cherish her downtime, which she spends writing and reading poetry from the likes of Sylvia Plath and Ana\u00efs Nin. As she enters the new year, McRae is hard-resetting before heading into her next album cycle, which she\u2019ll start conceptualizing in early 2026. \u201cI think the more disconnected you can stay from the reaction of it all and from how people are perceiving you, and the more in tune you can get with your own body, that\u2019s the only way you can stay sane through this all,\u201d she says. \u201cBut yeah, it\u2019s been a really crazy year. I think sometimes you don\u2019t even realize what\u2019s going on outside of your bubble. And then you walk outside and you\u2019re like, oh, whoa, things have shifted.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tate McRae is ready to take a breath. Since releasing her chart-topping third album, \u201cSo Close to What,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,86819,85,46,409,3051],"class_list":{"0":"post-168818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-hitmakers","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-tate-mcrae"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}