By Audrey Hayes
Greetings everyone!
So, I have previously not (knowingly) listened to any earlier Tate McRae songs and wouldn’t count myself as a superfan in the slightest. To be quite honest with everyone here, I had no idea she existed (please don’t hate me). But I recently had the privilege to listen to and watch the corresponding videos to her new album, "THINK LATER."
Greedy: Okay, so if you’ve been on TikTok recently, you’ve heard this song, and you're a Tate McRae fan. You're probably either in love with this song or wish it would fall off the charts. I, for one, hum this song probably daily. Not only is she coming out on a Zamboni, which I think is everyone’s dream, but she’s got detailed choreography with her hockey squad. She’s pulling out all the stops of a modern-day pop/hip-hop song. She’s using foreign tracks like steel drums, she’s layering all these different basses and small tracks of drum hits. Although she’s giving very sexual energy with the lyrics and poses, I can’t help but take this as an empowering anthem of her saying, “Yeah, you want me, but like so does everyone, look at me, even I would want me.”
Grave: Surprisingly enough, this song has no Tate McRae special (unfortunately) but starts with almost an acoustic feel compared to the rest of the songs. She throws out one of the best lyrics I’ve heard in this album, “You can only dig the grave so deep, Before you start to take me down with you, with you, with you, with you.” Have I ever been in a serious breakup? Luckily no. Do I have sadness from this lyric like I have? Hell yes. She hits target after target in this song whilst collapsing into a symphony of realization; she tells us, “But I could never make you want me like I wanted to be wanted, I could never really change you like I thought that I could.” She broke from trying to change this relationship into something salvageable, and they never wanted to try. “You had me, you had me for a minute. The sad thing is you never would admit that you had me.” Heart- BREAKING!
Stay Done: Now, if I thought that Grave was acoustic, I was wrong. This is acoustic. It starts out sounding like a mix of a Lana Del Ray song and American Teenager by Ethel Cain, it swiftly moves into our signature Tate but is still dampened by light acoustic guitar. She still wants to wake up with this person, she still wants to be with this person, she can’t stay done with this person. They have her heart under lock and key, and she knows they are wrong for her, but she wants them still
Exes: So this is another one of the songs off this album that I’ve heard circulating my TikTok fyp (For You Page) recently that I’ve just sort of heard, liked, and shrugged off, thinking it’ll last about as long as all other TikTok songs. Maybe two seconds. But hearing this song in context, compared to the heartache we experienced in Stay Done. I’m blown out of the water. It’s a revenge anthem. Tate’s exes don’t leave her behind; they always get stuck and hung up on her. They always want her back, and she’s kissing them goodbye
with her “Kisses to my exes who don’t give a shit about me” and the “Kisses, kisses to the next ones who think they can live without me.”
Listening to this album took me for a loop. It tells the story of a woman going through what can only be imagined as a heartbreaking breakup, dropping toxic friends she dealt with along the way, falling into a depressive state from an unstable relationship, losing yourself to a law-breaking partner, finding something good with a vindictive ex and finding out her happiness was nothing but a façade. It’s an odyssey and one that I heavily recommend embarking on while reading the lyrics to gather the true messages she is giving because they are prevalent and influential. I will be putting at least three of these songs on my playlist. Even though only some of the songs are listed below with reviews, all of the songs should be listened to and appreciated even by non-pop fans (but let’s be honest, we all liked early One Direction and Justin Bieber, so…)