Canadian singer-songwriter Tate McRae released her sophomore album “THINK LATER” on December 8, 2023 via RCA Records.
It is her first body of work in a year and a half since the 2022 debut album “I Used to Think I Could Fly”.
On The album, she worked with American pop rock band OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder, who is co-executive producer.
The album comprises a 14-track, produced by Ryan Tedder, Grant Boutin, Jasper Harris, Thomas LaRosaT, and Tyler Spry.
Tate McRae said of the album, “This album describes the spontaneity and chaos of turning 20 and every thing that comes with it. Writing this whole thing was one of the most stressful, exciting, nerve racking, and fun things I've ever gone through. For the first time in my life I lived this year a little less with my head and a little more with my intuition.”
She added, “Writing and creating the world for this album was so much fucking fun and I got to do it with my favourite ppl ever. Thank u to Ryan Tedder who is the most talented alien genius for Ep'ing this record and to everyone who made these songs with me. They are so special to me.”
Tate McRae explained track-by-track for the album via Apple Music.
“cut my hair”
“I was very, very stubborn on making sure that the album opened up with a big tonal shift from my last album. On i used to think i could fly, I was living in a world where I was really confused as to who I was. I was 17 years old moving out to LA alone, trying to find friends, trying to figure out where I fit in and my whole purpose. One of the biggest things that happened this year was that I did a lot of self work and tried to figure out what the fuck I actually wanted in life, and that's how I feel like this album starts. You can hear throughout the record that I take little jabs at my old self and my old songwriting habits. I talk about the growth that's happened turning 20 and everything in the last year. The track starts off with a story about a person, but by the second verse you start to realise that I'm talking more about myself and it's more of an introspective song than about a relationship.”
“greedy” via PEOPLE “A guy had come up to me at a bar and he was like, 'Oh, you're so mysterious and I feel like I know nothing about you. You keep your cards so close to your chest.' Then I was thinking, and I'm like, 'Yeah, it takes a lot for me to really open up and get to know someone.' You have to really get close to me. We started writing this really sassy song about the feeling of having utter confidence being like, 'Yeah, it takes a lot to really get me to open up.' And it ended up feeling like this really cool female empowerment song, which I loved. It's a tongue-in-cheek kind of vibe. I feel like it's my most playful song I've written so far being like, 'Yeah, I would want myself too and don't expect it to come that quick.'”
“run for the hills”
“'run for the hills' is one of the first songs we wrote for this record. I rewrote it multiple times, though, because I really wanted to nail the feeling of the relationship that I was actually going through. I was just absolutely obsessed with it, and I was obsessed with this person. I began to fall in love with the toxicity of it. Usually I'm a really stubborn person and I feel like I can get myself out of any situation, but for some reason I was stuck in this ongoing cycle of being so attached. I'm now on the other side of it and I can be like, 'Oh, thank god I'm on my own,' but I think in the moment it was a mix of the worst and most magical feelings ever.”
“hurt my feelings”
“This is one of my more risky songs, and it talks about wanting someone that you can't have and that isn't yours and being like, 'God, I feel like I find myself daydreaming about this one person over and over again, but they're just not mine. The only thing I can do is write about it.' It's funny, because I feel like this song is misinterpreted a lot, because the title is the opposite of what I'm saying. What I'm saying is I want you to hurt my feelings. I want you to be in my life. I want you so bad and I just can't have you.”
“grave”
“I went through this whole year of the push and the pull of loving and hating this relationship and being stuck in the whirlwind of it all and being very infatuated with all of it. I couldn't get myself out of this hole. Everyone was telling me I was literally just batshit crazy for thinking that it was so great. Then when I started writing “grave”, it was the first time I began realising what was actually happening; the rose-coloured glasses came off for the first time. There's one lyric in here where I say, 'I hold my grudges like I held you.' That perfectly describes me as a person. I think one of my not-so-great traits is I can hold a grudge and I can be really stubborn in the ways I cut people off if they do me dirty. You can only dig the grave so deep, you can only take something too far before there's a point of no return.”
“stay done”
“I have a hard time writing love songs. Sweeter songs are hard for me to write in the studio, but this is one of my sweetest songs in a fucked-up kind of way. It talks about how I can still be in love with you even when you're yelling at me. I can still find the most beautiful parts of the situation even when it's the worst possible situation. In the second verse it goes, 'It's a one-way street I can't get off.' That's how I felt about the relationship. Visually, that was the best way to describe it, driving down a road going full speed, and there's no way to turn and you can't go backwards.”
“exes”
“This song was kind of like the last Hail Mary of the album, and we wrote it in like, I kid you not, 30 minutes, and recorded and produced the whole thing within 90 minutes. It was basically just the last remaining thoughts in my head for the album. I'm very awkward and Canadian…sometimes too nice for my own good. I do feel like I step into a different body sometimes when I'm doing songs like 'Greedy' and 'Exes.'”
“we're not alike”
“I'm always going to have my girlfriends' backs. I'm always going to respect girl code and respect the lines that you don't cross and the boundaries that you have with your girlfriends. That's how I think you maintain a friendship. I had gone through a specific situation where me and this girl had completely different morals. I don't like to talk about things online or make things messy, but I do like to write about them, to have that as my therapy.”
“calgary”
“When I was younger, my number one thing that I wanted to do was move out of Calgary and move to LA. Now that I'm getting a little older, I'm realising how much I appreciate the town that I came from. A lot of this album takes inspiration from my Canadian roots, especially with the visuals and the music videos. It shows where I'm from and what I've grown up watching and listening to and going through. “calgary” was actually written when I had gone home in the summertime and I was with all my friends. The second I get home I feel like I go back to my 15-year-old self. I can have so much growth and I can go through so many things in my life and I can get back home and feel exactly how I felt in grade 10. It talks about my brother, it talks about my family, talks about my friends from middle school, and I've never talked about a concept like this before because these feelings were suppressed.”
“messier”
“I wrote this song in the shower in 20 minutes. I ended up finding a weird YouTube beat and wrote all the melodies on guitar. My producer added some chords, and I knew I wanted a song called “messier”. This song touches on the idea of two people together being way more of a mess together, even when they're messy on their own. It's like, 'You're the only person who can get under my skin because I love you that much and because you're the only person that I've ever wanted.' That's why fire clashing with fire makes the biggest explosion and the biggest mess.”
“think later”
“'think later' was also written the week before we turned in the album. We just wanted to make a super hard bass-heavy song with the ballsiest lyrics we could think of. I remember someone asking me, 'What's the most “think later” thing you've ever done?' And I was like, 'Well, when I met my ex-boyfriend.' It was this really crazy story of me acting like a complete menace for a night, which is so hilarious because I'm a pretty shy Canadian, very goody-two-shoes, the majority of the time. For this one night, I remember shutting off my phone and just completely trying to get lost in the moment. It ended up being the most chaotic night of my life where everyone was stressed as to where I was. We basically told the story in the song and broke down this really chaotic night in my life. It was very much necessary for the album because it's just an absolute perfect example of how this whole storm started.”
“guilty conscience”
“It talks about my dedication to this person and wanting to be by their side regardless of what anyone said around me, regardless of what anyone thought about what I was doing. I was so stubborn that I would hold on to them forever. I was reluctant to let go.”
“want that too”
“It was written about the music industry and some situations I'd gone through. I was a young and naive 18-, 19-year-old thinking that I could trust everyone I came across. This is when I realised for the first time in my life that kindness can be taken for weakness and that I needed to have a few more walls up. My boundaries had to be a little stronger in order to not get walked over as a young female in the industry. That's when I got my first taste of being a young woman who's trying to start something in her life. There's that lyric, 'The second I find something good, I know that you're going to want that too.' It's a really personal story and it just shows the feeling of being used and not knowing it was coming and feeling blindsided by things.”
“plastic palm trees”
“Well, I have loved this lyric for a very long time: 'Caught in dream till something in my head said, I'm sorry, you were just looking at plastic palm trees.' It's such a cool way to describe my feelings about Los Angeles—how picture-perfect it looks. There's this one street in LA that's a row of flawless palm trees that literally look fake. I actually think they might be imported from somewhere else. I don't think they're real. LA can come across as a perfect place, and there's a lot of business that people don't talk about. Coming from a town like Calgary was just a bit of a culture shock moving. I began experiencing a place filled with a lot of different personalities and characters.”
