Lucia Thomas | Contributing Illustrator

On my first listen of Tate McRae’s new album, “So Close To What,” a seemingly very important question formed in my mind: Why is Tate McRae famous?

On the surface, it’s easy enough to answer. She’s young and beautiful. She’s an excellent dancer and performer. She’s uncontroversial. She makes bops. 

And yet, despite all the evidence in her favor, a piece of the puzzle is still missing — a piece that feels more essential than ever on her third full-length project. Let me exemplify what I mean through a quick quiz. Two of the lyrics below were generated by AI, while one is a lyric from “So Close To What.” Can you identify which is which? 

“Yeah, I’ll be nice, up until I’m not.” 

“Say you wanna know me / You don’t wanna know me / You just wanna know what I do.” 

“I tried to be everything I thought he wanted / And truthfully, I’m so over but stuck on it.” 

I’ll reveal the answer at the end, but you get the gist. McRae suffers from what chronically online groups have coined the “Curse of the Albanian Pop Star,” which states that almost all major pop girls from Albania or of Albanian descent lack a concrete identity in their music (Ava Max, Bebe Rexha, Rita Ora). While the curse can be broken — at least temporarily — if the artist makes particularly exceptional music (Dua Lipa circa 2020), the theory imposes a ceiling: No matter how many hits an Albanian artist has, their lack of identity prevents the creation of a devoted fanbase or lasting impact. This also results in an AI-like quality in their music: Write me a generic pop hit that will chart for three weeks and then fall into obscurity. 

Tate McRae bends the Curse of the Albanian Pop Star in a couple ways: For one, she’s not Albanian. Secondly, she does seem to have, at least on paper, a devoted fanbase — she’s embarking on a huge arena tour in 2025, with many shows already sold out. Other than that, though, she falls in line with the aforementioned singers, something that’s more apparent than ever on “So Close To What.” 

Musically speaking, McRae is never offensive. Most of these songs have catchy but bland melodies or choruses, the production is tolerable but boring, and her singing isn’t bad (save for the aggravating Halsey-esque cursive inflection). The lyricism isn’t great, but nothing sticks out as being particularly awful. The issue, then, lies in this lack of anything noteworthy or provocative — in either a positive or negative way. It’s the sonic equivalent of a lukewarm bowl of sugar-free oatmeal. 

McRae is obviously influenced by great pop acts of the 2000s, and the songs on which she embodies these acts end up being the best. “It’s ok I’m ok” harkens back to Britney Spears, with a somewhat-satisfying stompy chorus and a genuinely good music video that would have created a stir in 2002. “Sports car” reads as a sequel to The Pussycat Dolls’ “Buttons,” complete with a not-so-subtle analogy: “We found this really cool metaphor — how the feeling of sex and love in a relationship can directly correlate to a sports car,” McRae said of her track. Thank you for clarifying that, Tate. It was unclear. 

It’s a shame that a “really cool metaphor” can only go so far. The deeper cuts on “So Close To What” — “I know love,” “Like I do,” “bloodonmyhands” — flounder in a sea of generic pop acts, aided by the incredible homogeneity of the production and lyrical content across the album. Any one of these individual aspects could be overlooked (at least slightly) if it was alone in its mediocrity — say, if the lines “Yeah I know love / Yeah I know love when it hits, when it feels like this / It’s a little like drugs” were placed over harder-hitting production or sung with more precision and technical prowess. Yet McRae continues over and over to fire on no cylinders, highlighting the generic quality of each individual nut and bolt in her music. 

What’s frustrating is that there are whispers of a more interesting album and artist somewhere deep within this music. In the video for standout track “Revolving door” (despite the hammer-over-head metaphor “Say I keep coming back / Like a revolving door”), McRae dances among four others with the sort of exacting quality that should translate to her music. She is eventually left alone in the room, broken down on the floor after stating that she just needs “a minute.” It feels as though we’re closer than ever to seeing behind the curtain, seeing something interesting and emotionally resonant in her work. Alas, this depth only lasts for the video’s short runtime, and then we’re thrust back into generic machine-made pop about love and not love and maybe love. In this way, Tate McRae is so close to something. But per the bulk of evidence she’s given us, she regretfully remains far, far away. 

Oh, and the quiz: All three lines were taken from “So Close To What.” But they could have been written by AI, right?