Tate McRae is ready to step into a new musical era.
The 20-year-old singer dropped a new single, “Greedy,’ last month, her first new release since her 2022 debut album, I Used to Think I Could Fly.
“The past couple weeks have been really crazy,” she shared with ET’s Cassie DiLaura before her recent concert at the Hollywood Palladium. “It just feels like a bit of a whirlwind.”
Reflecting on her latest shows, McRae shared how surreal it feels to get onstage with new music and have her dedicated legion of fans already know the words by heart.
“I think I have this disbelief that literally anyone is going to show up, so it is very crazy when that doesn’t happen and they are all singing back my lyrics,” she admitted. “It’s very special and I just feel very lucky that they all come and support me so much. It just feels very crazy.”
McRae came on the scene in 2019, when her song, “One Day,” went viral on YouTube and TikTok, landing her a record deal. In 2020, she released her debut EP, All the Things I Never Said, and had her biggest hit to date with “You Broke Me First.”
“‘You Broke Me First’ happened during the pandemic, and that was weird ’cause I was still at home,” she recalled. “This song was like around the world, but I was still at home, so I couldn’t really feel it. Then I moved to L.A. and did all the festivals and I was like, ‘Holy sh*t, this is real.'”
Describing her upcoming new music as “a little savage, a little rebellious,” McRae told ET she’s ready to enter her “good girl gone bad” era.
“[It has a] a very different sound palette,” she said of her forthcoming music. “I think it’s a lot more pop than anything I’ve ever done. It feels like grungy, heavy, and very hard pop, which is really cool.
“You can get down and dance to it, but also it feels like it’s more feistier side of my personality coming out instead of more vulnerable side,” she added. “I would say it’s a bit of a switch, which is exciting.”
That attitude is on full display in the “Greedy” music video, in which McRae also showcases the dance moves that made her a finalist on So You Think You Can Dance at just 13 years old.
“That day was so easy and fun,” she shared of making the video. “I mean, the dancers in that music video are exceptional, so it felt very cool and challenging, because they are killing it behind me, so I am like, I have to meet that level — it was just a really fun day.”
McRae admitted that it’s been “a bit of a challenge” holding onto her dance background as her music career takes off.
“I feel like I have been skewed by other opinions a lot of the time,” she noted. “For the first time, actually, the ‘Greedy’ music video feels like it’s truly 100 percent my style, my vision.”
“I just I think it really does represent me really well, and that feels really satisfying for the first time in my career,” she marveled, adding that she hopes to carry that confidence throughout her new musical era.
“I’m a totally different person and also I feel like I’m in a more playful time of my life where I’m just writing about riskier and just more foreign concepts that I’ve literally never talked about before, so it’s very fun,” she shared.
However, don’t expect a collab with one of her celeb BFFs, Olivia Rodrigo, anytime soon.
“We would never even think about, like, whipping out a piano or a guitar while we hang out,” McRae admitted when asked if the pair has ever tried to write a song together. “We always want to talk about just nothing.”
“It’s really special and important,” she added about her friendships with fellow singers like Rodrigo and Conan Gray. “Aside from that it’s like, people who are in the same industry, but finding genuine people who have all the right intentions I think is really rare, so when I do find them I’m like, ‘I love you and I will care for you forever.’ We got each other’s backs and we don’t do weird sh*t… I think that’s really special and cool and I have quite a few people that I feel like I found in the last couple of years.”
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