Just as winter transitions to spring, we go through our own personal seasons of change in our lives. Life is anything but simple, a complex collection of individual pieces making up the whole. We might fool ourselves into believing that we can reach a certain point in life, turn a certain age, or make a long-held dream come true and we’ll magically transform into the best version of ourselves, simple as flipping a switch. But the reality is, who you are today isn’t all that different from who you were yesterday. On the contrary, the lack of change can actually throw us into disarray. We may suffer at its hands for a few days, like a flu, or it may hound us for years.

And the flu seems to hit hardest the moment you step into adulthood. On the eve of that transitional birthday, you count down the last 10 seconds, but when you reach zero, nothing feels different. You’re old enough to drink and buy cigarettes, but it does nothing to offset the embarrassments of yesterday. You’re as embarrassed and bashful as ever. But everyone around you treats you like an adult anyway as they begin to lecture you about heavy responsibilities. You go to sleep one day feeling invincible, intoxicated by the idea of adulthood, only to wake up with any sense of confidence having vanished into thin air, like it had been a mirage all along. As the days fill up with more and more of these contradictions, the chaotic vortex swirls progressively faster.

Tate McRae’s album “So Close To What,” released in February, explores this very feeling of contradiction. Her music mirrors her own experience, living in a space existing somewhere between apparent adulthood and lingering immaturity—the confusion of rushing full speed ahead toward somewhere almost within reach without knowing exactly where it is you’re headed. As she mentioned in one interview, maybe that’s what being in your early 20s is about. And the same can be said about love. Love is seen as something everyone inevitably experiences in their 20s, but once you’re there, everything about it is new, unfamiliar, and daunting. As an adult woman, she can now speak boldly about love and desire, but at the same time, she’s terrified of a world that remains as inscrutable as ever.

Some emotions only come out when you’re unsure about yourself
Tate McRae may see love or romantic feelings as a “Revolving door,” like one of the songs off her new album is titled. You make the same mistakes. You end up getting back with the same person over and over. You get stuck in an endless cycle between intense hatred and rekindling the spark. Love can also mean pushing someone away despite how you really feel, as with the songs “No I’m not in love” and “Means I care.” Her album is peppered with glimpses of the kinds of love you can only experience when you’re at that age where you don’t truly know yourself or what love means.

Her album expresses these types of love with a nostalgia for the early 2000s. As McRae has said in interviews, her new music is built on a foundation of a nostalgic look back at 2000s pop and R&B. Putting a twist on older music might feel a bit passé at this point, but her music and her command of it shows that her approach transcends mere citation.

“Miss possessive,” the opening track, is a perfect example. Overtop of a minimalistic beat that comes down to a drum machine and some synths, McRae sings breathily in a way reminiscent of Britney Spears. Add to that a possessiveness over a partner born out of a desire to control them and the song seems to take the tired old crazy ex-girlfriend* trope and re-examine it from an interesting new perspective.

What makes the album so intriguing is that the overarching theme of contradiction isn’t limited to love. In “Purple lace bra,” McRae expresses her frustration around being sexually objectified by the general public and men in particular. Adulthood has given her an expanded set of tools for self-expression, but it’s come with its own sense of discomfort. The final track, “Nostalgia,” delves into the theme of unfulfilled dreams, capturing the paradox of looking toward the future with hope while consequently losing sight of the present or wasting time longing for the past. We’re shown all the bewilderment that comes with self-exploration.

These feelings are laid even more bare on songs with retro vibes like the Miami bass-inspired “bloodonmyhands,” the Pussycat Dolls-esque “Sports Car,” “2 hands,” and “Sign.” Originally known for her mellow, somewhat melancholy sound, McRae’s evolution in musical style is a sure sign of her growth. Her new album also seems to musically channel the contradictions and confusion that make up the central theme—and the process of progressively getting over them—to ultimately reflect on her journey of personal growth.

Connecting the dots by looking backwards
Tate McRae got her start as a dancer. She made a splash at dance competitions from a young age, building up experience along the way. In 2013, she was named Mini Female Best Dancer at the Dance Awards in New York, later winning a silver medal in the solo and bronze in the duet categories at the 2015 Youth America Grand Prix. Her big break came in 2016 when she appeared on “So You Think You Can Dance” for its 13th season. She was the first Canadian to make the finals, and ended up finishing third, by which point she had gained international recognition.

Her performances at this time were purely physical, but in her heart, a love of music was blossoming. In 2017, she started uploading original songs under her “Create With Tate” series on her YouTube channel, where she had previously been uploading her dance videos and vlogs. Her first song, “One Day,” was a YouTube hit, and she eventually made it available for purchase. From that point forward, she began steadily releasing the songs she wrote, slowly building up her image as a singer. By 2019, she’d signed a record deal, solidifying her career in music.

Switching to a singing career didn’t mean severing ties with her past as a dancer, though. She kept dancing while writing songs, with each interest only making the other stronger. Her foundation in dance allows her to express lyrics, and therefore her creative vision, through movement. You can see this clearly in the music video for “Revolving door,” where she’s dancing from start to finish, vividly reflecting the lyrics about disorienting emotions and despair over repeating the same mistakes.

There’s a famous quote about life: “We can’t connect the dots looking forward; we can only connect them looking back. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” What McRae’s doing today is placing those dots one at a time—weaving between song and dance, lyrics and the stage, the present and the past. Her music helps her explore a version of herself she’s yet to fully define, embracing all the contradictions and confusion as she starts again in an emotional loop, still making her way forward.

As the title “So Close To What” alludes to, life often feels like you’re getting close to something, but that it’s somehow still so far away. Clear, yet out of focus. But it’s in this imperfection where we often find our truest selves, and through that, we grow. Tate McRae might see herself as a walking contradiction in a life full of them, but she’s always moving towards personal growth.

* Crazy ex-girlfriend: A term that made frequent appearances in American pop culture during the 2000s and early 2010s, it refers to someone who can't get over a breakup and keeps trying to contact her ex, possibly resorting to violent behavior. The phrase is now seen as epitomizing the problematic culture of looking at a woman’s expression of her emotions as eccentric and unhealthy, and has fallen out of use.