2024: Tate McRae’s First Break Through: Fans Are Greedy for the Artist’s Second World Tour

17 Sept

Tate McRae throws her Rapunzel-length hair out of her face for the millionth time as she glides across the stage to dance to the melody of her own voice. She has never tied her hair up through all the dancing and singing at any of the thirty-five shows on her ‘Think Later’ world tour. In the bible, it says, “If a woman has long hair, it is her glory.” But the 21-year-old artist has more glory than just her luscious locks. She is becoming the image of a pop girl icon and being named as this generation’s Britney Spears.

In an interview with The Project in 2022, Tate said that her “whole life is now on the Internet. [Her] diary.”. The world thinks she became an overnight sensation with her breakout hit song, “You Broke Me First,” in 2020. But she has poured her heart and soul into her YouTube covers and, eventually, her original songs for almost ten years. Her hard work creating songs finally paid off when she got signed by RCA Records in 2019 and released her first EP, “All the Things I Never Said,” the following year.

When she was still in high school, Tate told her parents that she was going to be a singer. In an interview on Sunrise in 2020, Tate said, “I think in the beginning, they didn’t realise the singing would actually work. They were just like, ‘You’re just a girl who writes poems,’ and ‘You’re just a 13-year-old girl putting things on YouTube.” Tate has reached new milestones, with her recent single “Greedy,” placing at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. “I feel like I took a risk on that song. Like it just doesn’t sound like the rest of my other music, so I was nervous to see what people were going to say,” she said in an interview with 92 PRO-FM on YouTube in 2023. Obviously, the people loved it, giving it the title of one of the most popular songs in the world at the time. “It felt very satisfying for it to turn out exactly how I’d pictured it in my head.”

On a TikTok reel from Today's Top Hits in 2021, Tate shared her initial process of writing a song: “I’ll come in with a concept. Like a little two-liner that I have on my phone… Then after we’ve kind of figured out the melodies, we dig deep into details. Go through a full-on therapy session and make it a full story so we can really envision it.” When she released her first album, “I Used to Think I Could Fly,” in 2022, her talent was clear. She had worked for years to get to this moment. “[That] album was a very big internal battle for me. I was so confused with who I was as a person… I remember releasing it when I was still on tour, and it felt so overwhelming. I was just like, ‘Oh, wow. I just released my first album. It’s here, it’s happening. I am now an artist,’” Tate told Billboard in 2023.

Her success is only growing, but she is still a woman in her early twenties going through life and learning from her mistakes. “I feel very grateful that people know my music and are able to make it into their own lives and appreciate it. It’s just very cool to me,” Tate told Billboard in 2023. Her vulnerability shines through her music, and although it’s making her writing stronger, it’s nerve-racking to expose your feelings in the public eye. “When I write a song completely by myself, there’s a lot of doubt that comes along with it. I write a lot of my music by myself… But as much as I love the song, I am its harshest critic.”

Tate’s new album ‘Think Later’ was released earlier this year, and she will make her way to Australia for the second time in her career. “Australians are probably the loudest crowds I’ve had so far,” Tate said on Sunrise in 2022. The land down under is welcoming her back with open arms, ready to watch her live as a now worldwide pop star. She said to Billboard in 2023, “When Billboard on Instagram posts that top 10 picture, and to see my name next to Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny is just so next level… It feels very surreal what’s happening right now.”