Miss Possessive or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Tate McRae
Did her purple lace bra get your attention?
Tate McRae may not seem like a very interesting artist. To many, she’s lost in the sea of radio hits and Aerie playlists. Only seeing glimmers of her on-stage persona when clips pop up, or only hearing about her when Twitter fights about her newest single.
For those unaware, Tate McRae is a twenty-one-year-old singer, songwriter, and dancer who first rose to fame after placing third on So You Think You Can Dance in 2016. Known mainly for dancing, she began releasing music on YouTube in 2017, and by 2019, she was signed to RCA Records. She continues to perform and release music to this day.
Personally, I enjoyed her singles “It’s ok I’m ok,” “Revolving door,” and “Sports car,” so I was willing to listen to her newest album when it came out on February 21st, 2025.
But while listening to So Close to What, something unexpected happened: I started to think. About women in the music industry, about Tate’s youth, about sexualization.
While her singles might seem like a soulless revival of the dirty pop of the 2000s, within the context of her album, they paint a much different story.
Oh, baby, I’ve been there.
I first really understood who Tate McRae was after the release of her “It’s ok I’m ok” music video on September 12th, 2024.
I had heard “greedy” and initially thought it was annoying. I heard “exes” and liked it enough, even with the almost nonsense lyrics: “Changed my mind up like it’s origami.”
But “It’s ok I’m ok,” took me by surprise. Especially the video.
This shouldn’t have been a surprise, maybe, but she was stunning. She was also seemingly naked. I was shocked, and strangely concerned about how this girl was being seen. She was strutting around a fake New York City, with one of the first shots of her comeback music video being of her partially naked ass. Then, she’s depicted as fully naked, being pushed onto a car and handcuffed by the cops. She has a mischievous and playful smile on her face, enjoying being pushed around. There was something off about the whole thing in a very unsettling way.
I thought about how young she appears. Then I remembered, Tate is older than me. By 15 days. Maybe I lack self-awareness about my age, or I’m a prude or something else I can’t quite place. It was just weird.
Yes, this is all legal, and it’s great to express sexuality, but the involvement of a naked Tate and the NYPD gave the whole thing a strange air of harshness. It made the whole thing extra upsetting.
Either way, the video was doing what it was made to do; it grabbed my attention.
I also genuinely liked the song, don’t get me wrong. It feels very similar to early 2000s pop, which I absolutely adore.
My friends have labeled it as derivative, but I enjoyed how it seemed to be an antithesis to the song “Taste” by Sabrina Carpenter, which came out a month before “It’s ok I’m ok.” Yes, here I am analyzing the lyrical content of two pop radio hits. Spare me.
Both songs are the narrators speaking to their ex’s new girlfriend. Instead of the petty “You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you” from Carpenter, McRae simply states “No nothin’ could make me miss it/Take him, he’s yours.” The latter of the two always seemed a bit more “pro-women” to me.
Tate comes from a place of understanding, with other lyrics like: “And she be like, ‘He's so perfect’/ I be like, ‘Oh, what version?’/ ‘Ain't nobody got me this nervous’/ Oh, baby, I been there.” It also feels more freeing. But I digress.
Currently, the “It’s ok I’m ok” video has over 46 million views on YouTube, with clips spread across the Internet with hundreds of millions more.
Tate was naked in her video. And the world was watching.
Oh, golly gee.
“Sports car” is the third single from So Close to What, released on January 24th, 2025.
I listened to this song a few days after it was released, and I was hooked. It is a sultry, dark pop song where you can really hear the 2000s influences, with the song most closely resembling “Buttons” by The Pussycat Dolls.
I put it on during my commute to my internship for at least a solid month. It made me want to strut around, built my confidence, and got me ready for the day.
A lot of my friends didn’t see the vision. And that’s fine. I knew the sexy pop song from an artist they dismissed was a hit. And it still is a hit — every time I get into a car and put on a pop radio station, “Sports car” comes on at least once.
The song is blatantly sexual. With lyrics “You got a sports car/We can uh-uh in it/While you drive it real far,” and “We can share one seat,” the song is most literally about having sex in a sports car (possibly while they're driving?). She’s very much into it, with the desperate calls of “I’m goin’ weak in my knees/Where’d you put those keys?” and the suggestion of “You could do it on your own/While you’re lookin’ at me.”
Sex drips from this song like water droplets in a steamy car window. It’s great. See, I love it when young women express their sexuality!
The video, released alongside the single, is similarly sexual, with Tate being portrayed in twelve different outfits in twelve different rooms of a 1970s-esque peep show theater.
Unlike her other videos, there isn’t much formal choreography; rather, she’s putting on a show for a viewer with no face, later revealed to be herself. She’s seen through the glass wall, with the intercom almost always in frame.
There isn’t a sports car in the video, but there’s Tate; her body is presented as if it were a car on display. She’s beautiful and fully aware that she is making herself a commodity. Tate is showcasing the different sides of herself, no matter how false, through these different characters.
The reveal at the end that she’s the viewer alongside us highlights how, while the world is viewing her, she is always viewing herself.
The intentional falseness might be lost on the listen. Especially as a single. It’s just a sexy, fun time with a (if you don’t think about it too hard) sexy, fun video.
But listening to So Close to What in order makes the overt performance unmissable.
Did my purple lace bra catch your attention?
My view of Tate McRae completely changed after I first heard the album track “Purple lace bra.” It absolutely broke my heart.
I didn’t hear the cunty, sultry, performer (Tate calls this alter ego “Tatiana,”) I heard a hurt young woman. Since I didn’t follow her stuff before this album, it was like I was hearing Tate for the first time.
Unlike many of the other songs on this album, she’s unconfident, begging to be understood.
“Purple lace bra” is about how Tate is in a relationship where she only feels seen or listened to when she’s being sexual. She asks, “Did my purple lace bra catch your attention?” and “Would you hear me more if I touch you right here?” trying to figure out what she has to do to feel like she is a person worth listening to.
Tate sings the shattering bridge: “You only listen when I’m undressed/Hear what you like and none of the rest (…)/ I’m losing my mind ‘cause giving you head’s/The only time you think I got depth.” After hearing that for the first time, I had to get up and take a lap. It cuts to something very real and deeply painful.
While it hints at a personal relationship, it is also clearly a statement on her relationship with the public, with the “Purple lace bra” possibly referring to the one she wore in the “It’s ok I’m ok” video.
All of a sudden, I was questioning my own complicity in this: her purple lace bra did catch my attention. How she was being presented in “It’s ok I’m ok” was the reason I was following her music. The uncomfortable feeling only heightened when I re-listened to the subsequent song on the album: “Sports car.”
Now, hearing the song, I didn’t feel confident or sexy; I felt like I was listening to a girl performing so she could be seen.
In “Purple lace bra,” she asks, “Would you hear me more if I whispered in your ear?” Then immediately places “Sports car,” a song with a whispered chorus, right after it.
“Sports car” is currently the most popular song on the album, outstreaming all of the other singles. I think she answered her own question.
The placement of the songs is intentional and haunting, reframing the biggest hit on the album. I think it was genuinely genius, or at least interesting.
Tate McRae was not only making me think about society and how it views young women’s sexuality, but she was also making me consider my own role and complicity.
I saw Tate as a sexed-up pop diva, not fully connecting that her sexuality is what propelled her into stardom. She is my age (give or take a few days), how could I not see her as vulnerable and as human as I see myself? How could I allow scandal and promiscuity to blind me?
I then thought about other young pop stars and their sexualities, how people count down the days until they’re “legal,” and how we accept young women’s bodies as a commodity.
Although I believe that Tate enjoys performing, “Tatiana” is not her. It’s a character. Sure, she’s controlling how she is being perceived, as she recognizes in the “Sports car” video, but she is not controlling which sides of herself the world gives spotlight to.
She can be sexual, and not only sexual, but I’m afraid that she’s only recognized as an artist or really listened to when she’s overtly so.
Even in one of her more emotional singles from the album, “Revolving door,” there’s a moment where she takes off her clothes in the video. While the video feels vulnerable, these sexualized moments make everything feel performative. I mean, everything is performative when you’re performing. Still, I’m eager to see more of Tate alongside Tatiana.
I want to encourage you all to take deeper listens of things you might see as shallow. I did, and it changed the way I viewed someone. And I hate to say it, but popular art can have meaning too. Even Tate McRae.
However, I do hate that she did that collab with the famously bad person and lover of “God’s Country,” Morgan Wallen, this April. So much so that I refuse to listen to it. I don’t know how much of it was her decision, but I don’t like that she agreed to it. Ultimately, I’m not saying Tate is a perfect or even good person; I’m saying that she is a person with work that makes me contemplate the world in a way I wasn’t expecting. That doesn’t mean I support everything she does. I don’t know her personally at all. I also don’t support everything everyone I personally know does either.
Anyways, days before the controversy, I made this, which is now pertinent to my Substack:
Thank you for reading!
That women have to offer up a sexual treat to be heard is heartbreaking. As always you got me thinking!