Tate McRae Says Britney Spears Comparisons Are ‘Flattering and Scary’

Tate McRae gets why she keeps getting compared to Britney Spears. The 21-year-old Canadian pop star who first came into our lives as a tween finalist on the 2016 season of So You Think You Can Dance has mastered the art of dance pop temptation in videos like the one for her slinky new single, “Sports Car,” in which McRae whisper sings through a series of provocative outfits and high-energy dance scenarios that bear the unmistakable influence of Brit.

Making the rounds promoting her just released third LP, So Close to What, McRae is not shying away from the Spears talk, while also telling the U.K.’s Independent that she’s also feeling “so much more confident in my taste and the way I am as a person” these days. Noting that she started writing music when she was just 16 and “knew nothing,” McRae said that her 2022 debut album, I Used to Think I Could Fly, feels like a lifetime ago.

Thanks to the winning combo of high-pitched vocals and seductive choreo in the video for hits like her 2023 Billboard Hot 100 No. 3 “Greedy,” McRae said she’s also okay with the comparisons to a young Britney, though she finds them a bit intimidating. “I find that flattering and scary,” McRae said excitedly. “It’s such a crazy statement because no one can compare to Britney Spears. It’s like comparing someone to Michael Jackson! That’s the blueprint.”

McCrae teams up with her boyfriend, singer The Kid Laroi, on the new album, a tricky scenario she recently described as an unexpected treat. “It was a really funny process, because me and Laroi have never really, like, taken each other seriously,” she said during a Q&A Spotify listening party in Los Angeles earlier this month. “You know when you’re in a relationship and you sing around each other, but you don’t really, like, sing? So it was a little stressful being in the studio singing and writing in front of him, but it was a cool experience to watch him in his process.”