Meet Tate McRae, the Gen Z pop star about to hit the big time: she danced onstage with Justin Bieber, looks up to J. Lo, is pals with Olivia Rodrigo, and Billie Eilish wrote a song for her
Tate McRae is entering her “good girl gone bad” music era – at least, that’s how the songstress described her latest tracks to Entertainment Tonight recently.
The Canadian singer-songwriter, who dropped her single “Greedy” last month, told the publication that her new tunes are going to be a “a little savage, a little rebellious”.
So, what else do we know about the 20-year-old viral sensation whose name’s been on everyone’s lips lately?
Tate McRae is a trained dancer
You may know her as a singer, but McRae’s roots are actually in dance. According to the BBC, the youngster trained as a ballerina from age six and would spend up to 11 hours a day practising.
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She’s a next-gen pop star
After her success on the dance show, McRae assumed she’d pursue a career in dance, so she set up her YouTube channel Create With Tate to showcase her choreography, according to the BBC.
One day, she decided to post a song. “I went into my room for 20 minutes, shut the door, wrote a song, came out, played it on a piano and posted it. I didn’t even know where it came from. It was an accident,” she told the British TV network. Her piano ballad “One Day” ended up going viral, and today has 39 million views – and counting.
Her viral hits
It didn’t take long for record labels to notice McRae’s rising star – in fact, 11 of them reportedly got in touch with her to offer a deal, per BBC.
Some of McRae’s biggest hits so far include 2020’s “You Broke Me First”, which racked up over a billion listens on Spotify, and 2022’s “She’s All I Wanna Be”, which has 336 million listens.
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She’s pals with Olivia Rodrigo
So who are her biggest influences? She told the Netherlands’ Numero magazine that she “always looked up to on stage performances from Britney Spears or J. Lo, or Ciara, dancers who fully bring a performance on stage”.
She’s a social media sensation
Besides having 2.4 million followers on Instagram, McRae is also a huge TikTok star with many of her songs going viral on the social media platform. In late September, the singer fangirled over Pretty Little Liars star Shay Mitchell, who posted a video of her dancing to McRae’s new song, “Greedy”.
“Omg ily,” McRae wrote in the comments.
- McRae is a star on the rise – despite only being 20, her song ‘You Broke Me First’ has over a billion listens on Spotify and her latest song ‘Greedy’ is part of her ‘good girl gone bad’ era
- She parties with Iris Apatow, Addison Rae and Meghan Trainor, looks up to Britney Spears, J. Lo and Ciara, and is a trained ballet dancer who came third on So You Think You Can Dance 2016