Tate McRae’s love of words began during childhood. Growing up in her native Calgary, Alberta, Canada, McRae channeled her feelings into poems and short stories that later evolved into songs. “That was very much an outlet for me,” she tells American Songwriter about writing. “When I wasn’t able to put things into words or communicate them properly to my friends or family, I would end up writing about it and feel like it brought me a lot of clarity on my perspective on things.”
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Her grandfather bought her a piano and she taught herself how to play, which allowed her to transform her poems into songs with a structured verse and chorus. When she was 13, she started posting videos on YouTube of her original songs like “Dear Ex Best Friend” and “One Day.”
Before she was a singer, McRae was introduced to the arts through dance. Her mother was a dance teacher and she started training at the age of 6. But writing gave her a sense of freedom and independence during her formative years. “I think one of the biggest things I struggled with as a young girl was putting my feelings into words. I was a dancer my whole life, so that’s one way of expressing yourself without speaking. A lot of the time you get told what to do and you have to follow that. There’s no other outlet than just moving the body,” she explains.
While dancing gave her a physical outlet for her feelings, writing gave her a mental one. McRae says that after dance class, she would go home at night and commit her feelings to words through poems and writing down her subconscious thoughts. “It was definitely a huge relief for me,” she continues. “I feel like that was the way that I was able to voice my opinion because I feel like I didn’t really know what my opinion was until I was able to write about it. Then I was able to actually figure out how I felt about specific situations.”
McRae’s voice as a writer was also shaped by her worldly travels during childhood. Her father’s job as a lawyer frequently took the family around the world; they moved to the West Asian country of Oman when she was 4, where they stayed for three years. During that period, they traveled to various places including Dubai, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt. Being exposed to vastly different cultures and ways of living, she says, gave McRae freedom of expression and limitless possibilities. “I feel like it really opened up my brain and my creativity as a young kid,” she expresses. “I honestly thought the possibilities are endless. I think that’s a really magical thing for a kid to have in their brain. I feel like that’s what instigated me being so into dancing and music and songwriting was the fact that I truly believe that I can write or dance about anything.”
McRae’s mother owned a dance studio, which found her daughter surrounded by older dancers and all types of music, ranging from the music of Oman to that of Germany, as her mother is of German descent. Like travel, McRae says that listening to music of different cultures expands her mind and capacity as a songwriter. “Being exposed to so much music is very inspiring to me. I feel like when I listen to other music, that’s when I feel the desire to write a song myself,” she observes.
While her debut LP I Used to Think I Could Fly leaned into her emotional side, McRae was intentional about letting the “playful” and “feistier” side of her personality shine through on Think Later. “I was really persistent on walking into this album with a much more playful approach to my writing,” she explains. “Writing is very therapeutic for me, so a lot of sometimes my worst thoughts go into my songs. I really wanted to challenge myself this album to have fun in the process of it.” Young adulthood, processing a major breakup, and seeking authenticity are themes across the 14-track album. Along the way, she had the help of co-writers including OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, and hit pop writers Amy Allen and Skyler Stonestreet.
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“I try to be a sponge as much as possible when I’m in the room with other collaborators, ‘What can I learn from them?’” she says of her mentality. “One exercise that I like to do is write down the first thing that comes to my brain and try not to delete any ideas. I don’t really go in with too much expectations. I feel like the most genius ideas come when you let yourself go and just let the idea come into you. When I am truly comfortable in a writing room, I believe that a higher power comes into the room and fully hands you the idea. If it’s meant to be given to me, it’ll come out really easily. That’s always my favorite writing process. It’s just letting things take you and not overthinking them.”
Allen—who’s written such hits as “Adore You” by Harry Styles and “My Mind and Me” by Selena Gomez—was introduced to McRae through her radio hit “You Broke Me First.” Immediately struck by her voice and lyrics, Allen was in the writing room with Tedder and Scott Harris when they wrote a track called “10:35” that landed in the hands of Dutch DJ Tiesto, with Allen’s manager suggesting McRae as a featured guest. After seeing the music video, Allen was adamant about getting in the studio with McRae to write. She lent her pen to half the tracks on Think Later.
“The most refreshing thing for me as a songwriter is when someone like Tate comes in and creates space for a different style that’s totally new to me, and something I wouldn’t have thought to do otherwise. Her willingness to be vulnerable is so inspiring and she would relentlessly work on a song until it was perfect,” Allen shares with American Songwriter. “I also think our natural writing chemistry together helped this process feel so natural as well, and from day one together I knew that just as I trusted her instincts. I think a lot of artists are great at writing and/or singing, and Tate is obviously incredible at both but what makes her stand out is her taste and pursuit to make the song uniquely hers. Whatever Tate learned from me, I learned just as much from her.”
Taking her experiences and shaping them into unique songs is McRae’s specialty on Think Later. She describes the emotional ballad “Grave” as a “very satisfying” song to write and provides her with much-needed closure, as it finds her letting go of a toxic relationship, as demonstrated through powerful lyrics like: You can only dig the grave so deep / Before you start to take me down with you. Meanwhile, “Plastic Palm Trees” is inspired by life in Los Angeles. The idea came to her while she was driving down a street lined with palm trees thinking that they looked “perfect” and “flawless,” but feeling like it merely served as a mask for inauthenticity. “It has this eerie feeling underneath of there’s so much shit in LA and so many things that people don’t dare to talk about, but it’s such a flawless-looking place,” she describes. “I feel like when I cracked that lyric of, I’m sorry you were just lookin’ at plastic palm trees, that perfectly described how I was feeling about living in LA at that time.”
She carries that vulnerability into “Calgary,” which follows her on a trip to her hometown after just turning 20, yet feeling like she was back in high school despite all her accomplishments. “Every single emotion that I’d ever felt in high school was coming into my body again and it’s such a strange feeling,” she narrates of “Calgary.” “That’s how I’m talking about the odd feeling of going back to your hometown and feeling like so much has changed, but yet nothing has changed at all. That was pretty vulnerable to me.”
Since 2017, fans have watched McRae’s evolution as an artist and songwriter from teenager to her blossoming into adulthood. That journey is reflected in Think Later, a journey the superstar will continue as she looks toward the future with refreshed perspectives. “You’re constantly changing. By the time I get in the studio, again, I’m gonna feel like a completely different person than I was in the past,” she professes. “I want to put a little less pressure on myself and let the magic moments come in when they’re supposed to and not try to force them out. My tastes are changing so drastically at this point in my life, so I think it’s just being open to trying new things and pushing myself to go in directions that I don’t didn’t know were possible. I think that’s the goal for when I start writing again.”
Photo Credit Conor Cunningham / Courtesy of RCA Records
