Tate McRae Defends Self Against Being Called This Worst Kind of Music Industry Fraud

Tate McRae saw an unexpected change in circumstances during the week leading up to Thanksgiving. When she dropped the "Exes" music video on November 16, the public's response was startling, mostly wonderin who she is.

"Greedy," a sparkling blend of lite-vanity and full-blooded confidence that made it big on TikTok, had already started to pollinate the charts at that moment.

According to McRae, some reactions were actually negative and hurtful - especially those degrading her and calling her an "industry plant." Based on web definition, an industry plant is a deragatory slang for "music artist associated with a label but appearing as if they are independent and self-made. A music artist whose popularity is due to marketing efforts alone."

The 20-year-old recalls, "My true fans knew I danced, but it was finally for the first time like, is she an industry plant?" She is wearing an oversized red jacket with black fringe running down the arms of her Los Angeles management company, and she is sitting at a broken conference table in a corner office. "I'm like, I've been grinding since 13 years old! I'm probably the furthest thing from an industry plant for how long I've been doing this."

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Her dramatic appearance was greeted with equal parts suspicion and intrigue by recently anointed Tater-Tots, as her fandom called her. However, since making waves with 2020's "You Broke Me First," which currently has 1.2 billion Spotify plays, McRae has been a songwriter, dancer, and vocalist.

Anyone with access to the correct algorithm and a YouTube or TikTok account would be aware of this. She established herself in the years that followed as a somber, reflective counterpart to Billie Eilish, a journal scribbler who flaunted her identity with songs like "Don't Be Sad" and "Feel Like Shit."

However, with "Greedy," which has been featured in over two million TikTok posts and has topped both Spotify's Global and Billboard Global 200 charts, her current reinvention has won her first legitimate hit.

The reason for this is mostly that McRae's sophomore album, "Think Later," which was made available on Friday, is a rebirth.

She sheds the darker bedroom music that mostly fueled her first full-length album, "I Used to Think I Could Fly," from last year and takes on a new persona as a pop virtuoso, basting cutting-edge pop production with hoarse reflections on heartbreak and love.

In the first song, "Cut My Hair," she declares her goals: "Couple years back, so sensitive yeah / Moving like that gets repetitive, yeah / Singing 'bout the same old stupid ass things / Sad girl bit got a little boring."

"I was like, god, writing sad songs and being depressing, no one has ever seen a different side of me," she says. "All they've seen is victim, depressed Tate.

Sometimes you grow up and things change and I got bored of it. So I'm like, I want to switch this up, but it feels perfect because I think it's fun to take a jab at yourself sometimes and your older self."

McRae was disoriented when she started recording "Think Later" at the beginning of the year. She had just returned after an 11-month hiatus, the longest she had taken since taking dancing seriously as a teenager, and she felt disoriented and unclear about her identity and goals as an artist.

Moreover, she had moved to Los Angeles alone at the age of 17, leaving her hometown of Calgary, Canada, and had to navigate the music industry on her own.

Still, "Think Later" gave her the chance to seize artistic control and carve out a place for herself in the mainstream universe. Mood boards and playlists that referenced early 2000s culture (one "sonic," another "inspiration") were the first things to become viral. She acknowledges that certain songs, like "Greedy," are reminiscent of Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous," and she mentioned Timbaland, the song's producer, as the song was being written.

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Tate McRae