Tate McRae is not an American pop star, and that’s So Close to What your problem is with her
You wouldn't analyze Chappell Roan without Midwest context, so why do American pop culture writers analyze Tate without Canadian context? It's cringey. I'll contextualize since y'all refuse.
I cannot read another think piece from self-proclaimed pop culture writers who talk about pop without culture. Especially when it comes to Tate McRae and her new album So Close To What.
“She’s trying to be Britney/Christina”
“She gets lost amongst her contemporaries like Chappell and Sabrina”
“Her voice/lyrics aren’t strong”
All sentiments I have read repeatedly from Americans.
All telling that these writers haven’t taken a second to research, analyze, or even consider the cultural context that Tate McRae is intrinsically attached to and borne of.
If you dissected Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of the Midwest Princess without the context of the Midwest, you simply wouldn’t get published.
If you dissected Ariana Grande’s success in Wicked without her history growing up in the theatre scene, particularly within Drag communities and Broadway, you would miss the entire reason why she nailed Glinda.
If you have a single ounce of knowledge of Canadian pop music, there is no question of who Tate is, or her place, purpose, and voice within Gen Z pop music.
The moment you contextualize Tate McRae in American pop culture, you erase her. It is a total disservice not only to her, but draws a line between credible pop culture professionals and amateur conversationalists. You cannot have pop without culture, it is literally in the name.
So let me do the work for y’all non-Canadians. There are 3 layers to understanding the culture of Tate McRae’s pop:
The myth of Canadian identity being left at the border
The system that keeps Canadian pop going (no joke, it’s called MAPL)
2010’s Canadian pop that informed Gen Z Canadian pop artists (including, and perhaps especially, Tate)
Breaking News: Canadians Don’t Leave Their Identity at the Border
Contrary to popular belief (of Americans), living and working in America does not erase one’s Canadian cultural identity.
We just witnessed this in the 4 Nations tournament, where players from across NHL teams played for their home country. Sidney Crosby has played for the Pittsburg Penguins since 2005, over twenty years and 20 seasons with the American team. And yet for more reasons than the literal titling, he is Captain Canada. There is no separating the player from his commitment to representing, uplifting, and supporting Canadian hockey.
In the case of Tate McRae, her rise to fame certainly occured within American media systems. She remains the highest ranking Canadian finalist ever on So You Think You Can Dance. Her first EP’s lead single “Tear Myself Apart” was written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell. She is a regular within the American late night television circuit, and is an upcoming musical guest on Saturday Night Live (which, as we’ve discussed on the pod, is a deeply Canadian institution, but nonetheless a staple of American media).
But her American success and system navigation doesn’t make her an American artist. In fact, it makes her more Canadian.
One of the most pressing issues facing Canadian pop culture is its reliance on American media institutions. The lack of infrastructure Canada has to uplift and sustain its own talent is a pain felt by every facet of our industry, and talked about as regularly as the weather. Off of the global success of Blackberry, Jay Baruchel and Matt Johnson spoke of this regularly, including with me on the Canadian Screen Awards red carpet:
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Tate herself has made no efforts to detach Canada from her pop brand and identity. In fact, she has embraced and integrated it fully into her work, especially in her THINK LATER era defined by the iconic hockey-pads album cover and corresponding visuals.
Matthew Roberson of GQ explored Canadian influence on this era in conversation with Tate ahead of her celebrity-coach appearance at 2024’s NHL All-Star Game:
I could be completely off-base here, but in the “exes” video, there's lots of hay bales. There's cowboy boots. I'm wondering if that was inspired by—or perhaps a little bit of an homage to—the Calgary Stampede. [The Stampede is an annual, ten-day rodeo in Calgary that attracts over a million visitors per year.]
It was absolutely an homage to the Calgary Stampede! It's so funny because when I was younger, my biggest dream was to move out to LA and honestly, just get out of my hometown. As I've gotten older, I've just learned to love where I grew up. Finally, I'm appreciating it so much every time I go back home for Christmas and in the summertime.
[…]
An NHL All-Star Game taking place in Toronto is a very Canadian situation. How much pride do you have for Canada? When there's a new Canadian on the scene, whether it's in movies or music or sports or whatever, how hyped do you get for that sort of thing?
I'm so honored to be a Canadian. I think some of the greatest artists of all time have come out of Canada, and it's always such an honor to be put on lists beside them or talked about in the same conversation as them. Some of my favorite artists are all from Toronto or my area, and it's really cool to watch. And then also, you want to make your country proud, so it's always cool when I get to talk about it and bring it back to my hometown.
Credit: Matthew Roberson, GQ “Tate McRae on Repping Canada and Taking Zamboni Lessons”
While that era was very literally referencing Canada and Canadian culture, her new era is also baked into what makes Canadian pop music great.
But before we get into the Canadian pop pillars baked into So Close to What, we have to understand where Canadian pop music comes from and how it impacts Canadian artists.
A system as sticky as the name: MAPL is the backbone of Canadian pop music
Contrary to (American) popular belief, Canadian pop music does exist within its own ecosystem.
Where Americans compare Tate to Britney and Christina, Canadians see the influence of Fefe and Carly.
Where Americans define musical success by GRAMMYs, Canadians see Tate leading the 2025 JUNO nominations.
While Canada’s media landscape and pop culture institutions have changed drastically over the past decade, one of the remaining pillars of what defines Canadian culture is a definition itself: MAPL.
MAPL, which lives within the concept of CanCon (Canadian Content, which I reference frequently in relation to Canada’s visual arts like movies and television), qualifies music as Canadian via four distinct elements:
M (music): the music is composed entirely by a Canadian
A (artist): the music is, or the lyrics are, performed principally by a Canadian
P (performance): the musical selection consists of a live performance that is
recorded wholly in Canada, or
performed wholly in Canada and broadcast live in Canada
L (lyrics): the lyrics are written entirely by a Canadian
From the CRTC The MAPL system - defining a Canadian song
The reason why this qualification matters is because of the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) rules that state radio stations in Canada must play a specific amount of domestic content — aka, MAPL qualifying music.
If you turn on the radio in Canada you would never know Drake is in a feud with Kendrick by the frequency his music is played. Justin Bieber singles from a decade ago are still staple bops in drive-home-hour playlists (more on that later). Every raunchy single from The Weeknd has a radio remix that Canadians know word for word.
But it’s not just the global hits that stay in Canadian radio rotation — iconic artists like Jessie Reyez, Fefe Dobson, and Walk Off the Earth have scaled singles to the Canadian pop culture history books thanks to radio airplay.
Tate is the leading artist of Canadian 2020’s pop in the same way Justin Bieber and Alessia Cara dominated the 2010’s. She has had 28 entries into Billboard Canadian Hot 100, 5 Top 10 Hits and dominated 2023 with her single Greedy which spent 52 weeks on the chart, spending two of those weeks in the number one spot.
2010’s Canadian Pop Music that Raised Gen Z
Tate has famously said she was “age zero” during the 2000’s pop domination of Britney and Christina that she is often linked to (by Americans). She clarified recently that her childhood pop references are based in 2010’s pop, like Selena Gomez’s Revival album cover and VMA performances from Taylor and Ariana.
We’ll use this to narrow our scope of Canadian pop music influences down to the same timeframe, specifically looking at 2010’s pop that debuted ahead of the release of Tate’s first original song (which became certified gold in Canada) “One Day” in 2017.
While the influences we’ll explore can be seen across her overall work, So Close to What her most connected-to-iconic-pop body of work yet. The album was created while on her global tour, and as she says to iHeartRadio, was a product of her stardom persona. So let’s explore what pop music reached iconique levels of fame in Canada from 2010-2017 that surely influenced the icon that Tate McRae has become:
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Stop! Before we start listening to specific examples, let’s remember that your personal opinion on this music is irrelevant. These are songs had massive chart impact and distribution across Canada at the time of their release. Whether they meet 2020’s pop music standards matters to this analysis as much as what you or I had for dinner last night.
The Weeknd
Starting with an artist Tate McRae calls her “favourite artist ever”, The Weeknd is a dominating force of Canadian radio. 125 songs have entered the Billboard Canadian Hot 100, 26 have become Top 10 Hits with 7 reaching Number 1.
While the rest of this list will give you tangible examples of Canadian pop songs that connect to Tate, when it comes to The Weeknd it is best to hear the impact from Tate herself:
Jessie Reyez
As referenced by Tate in the above video, Jessie Reyez is a force of pop music. She’s generated hits for artists from Dua Lipa and Sam Smith to Eminem and Calvin Harris. Her breakthrough singer-songwriter moment with Figures spent 20 weeks on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 in 2017. I’m anxiously awaiting the day Jessie and Tate collaborate.
Carly Rae Jepsen
Carly Rae Jepsen’s Canadian chart history extends long before (and after) the global success of Call Me Maybe. In 2015, I Really Like You spent 20 weeks on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100, evoking the same endlessly-relatable, entry-level-yearning lyricism we find in So Close to What:
Alessia Cara
Every Canadian pop culture follower knows where they were when Alessia Cara upset Best New Artist at the Grammys in 2018. Alessia and Tate share a love of petty-pop lyricism, positioning themselves as self-sufficient even in their doubt — a deeply Canadian vibe to bring to any function. Here was the start of Alessia’s journey, her debut single in 2015 which charted for 39 weeks on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 and is still a staple in Canadian radio:
Fefe Dobson
When you think of culturally impactful pop music, it doesn’t get bigger than Stuttering, which spent 27 weeks on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100. When I think about Tate McRae’s earworm hooks and dance sequences, I think of the path Fefe blazed with this song. Any Canadian kid can sing this chorus in their sleep. Every Canadian millennial had this song linked to their MySpace or MSN account. It was a staple (and frankly, still is) a staple in Canadian breakup pop. Iconic? An understatement.
Walk Off the Earth
In 2015 Walk Off the Earth spent 22 weeks on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 with “Rule the World” — can you spot Tate dancing in the music video?
Justin Bieber
No one made it through the 2010’s in Canada without getting Justin Bieber hooks stuck in their heads. Over the course of Justin’s career 108 songs have charted on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 — but almost the entirety of Purpose spent weeks charting, and ten years later Canadian airwaves still have many of the singles in rotation, including Where Are U Now, Sorry (Number 1 for three weeks in 2015), Love Yourself (Number 1 for two weeks in 2015), andWhat Do You Mean? (Number 1 for one week in 2015).
Tate’s history with Bieber goes back to 2012 where she was a backup dancer once for him — the story quickly spiralled out of control for Tate’s liking — and the two have stayed connected over the years.
The Analysts Who Get It, Get It
Thankfully, there are journalists and media doing the work to contextualize Tate in Canadian pop culture. Her interview on Q with Tom Power is one of the best stops on her So Close to What press tour:
Whether on the red carpet or in press junkets, Shannon Burns always does a great interview with Tate:
Shocking to no one — both these interviews are by Canadian journalists, in Canadian media institutions.
There is no doubt that Canada gets Tate McRae even when the rest of the world doesn’t. And while it is certainly no one’s expectation that the world fully grasps the nuances of Canadian pop culture, there is a bar of research and cultural understanding one simply has to reach to call themselves a pop culture analyst.
Culturally competency doesn’t just matter in this space, it’s a requirement and a mark of the professionals contributing to the space and the amateurs talking within it.
If you want to play professionally in the pop culture arena, you have to know how to enter and exit niche conversation. That involves filling in your own cultural gaps, and researching more than you’re yapping about what’s hot.
That doesn’t change when the conversation turns to culture that comes from Canada. American context will never be adequate, or enough, to offer analysis and thoughts from.
An American’s lack of education into Canada culture is not a Canadian’s problem to fix, and it’s certainly not Tate McRae’s. She’s going to continue being the diva Canadian pop needs and deserves regardless of what Americans write about her, which will always be so close, but so far, to what she deserves.
americans tend to underestimate the influence that canadian artists have on music. nickelback, nelly furtado, avril lavigne, celine dion, ALANIS MORISSETTE ??? huge names in music that get overlooked when it comes to the influence of music no matter what genre. even bbno$ has been blowing up since the start of 2020 and they don't even know he's from vancouver!
I love cultural work that also stimulates the brain! This was great. I am neither American nor Canadian but I read every word and as a cultural commentator and analyst myself, this was super important to digest considering how much actual "culture" and history as you said is excluded from a ridiculous amount of commentary these days. I have a new respect for Tate!!
This motivates me to keep doing the research that is necessary to make impact in cultural discussion, esp in the digital age! Thank you!!