'I'm a very private person. I try to keep my circle small'

As pop star Tate McRae releases her third album So Close To What’, she chats to Ellie Muir about toxic relationships, fame and collaborating with rapper boyfriend The Kid Laroi

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In the week that I speak with Canadian pop star Tate McRae, she’s inescapable. Posters for her world tour are plastered across social media. Her songs are blasting from the speakers in Tesco. When I arrive at my Wednesday night dance class, the teacher is busy choreographing a routine to McRae’s turbocharged, innuendo-filled latest release “Sports Car”.

It makes sense that McRae is everywhere right now, having just released her third, much-anticipated album. So Close To What is a punchier, more decisive offering compared to the vaguely radio-ready songs about teenage angst and lust that defined her early releases. Simply put, it’s more grown up – partly because, well, McRae has grown up.

“I feel so much more confident in my taste and the way I am as a person,” she tells me, speaking from her pristine showroomlooking apartment in Los Angeles. “I started writing music when I was 16, I really knew nothing. I didn’t really know what the fuck releasing a debut album meant. I was so young.” Granted, she’s only 21 now, but 17 already feels like a lifetime ago.

McRae’s debut album, 2022’s I Used to Think I Could Fly, traded in high-school crushes on tracks with titles like “hate myself”. She upped the ante on her second album Think Later, with the cocky R&B-inflected “greedy” peaking at No 3 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and UK top 40 charts. That song, along with “exes” – a boastful ode to former lovers – catapulted McRae into the mainstream. Along the way, she has consolidated her image as a capital P pop star in the same vein as Addison Rae and Britney Spears, putting high-octane choreography at the centre of her live shows.

McRae’s rise reads like an industry checklist for how to become a modern-day pop star. For one thing, she’s a former child star, having lent her voice to the popular kid’s cartoon Lalaloopsy