Watch Tate McRae's electrifying performances on Saturday Night Live
The Calgary singer and dancer graced the Saturday Night Live stage for the second time, performing two songs from her third album, So Close to What, which just debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It's McRae's first No. 1 album.
McRae performed her sultry single "Sports car" on SNL, flanked by backup dancers in sleek dress suits on top of a mountain of chairs. She brought all her dancing chops (and flexibility) to the performance, with a dance breakdown that will likely be replicated on TikTok in the coming weeks.
Tate McRae is bringing dancing back to pop
McRae also joined host Shane Gillis in a sketch parodying the singing competition The Voice. McRae is no stranger to the reality TV competition world: in 2016, she was a contestant on So You Think You Can Dance, and made it to the top three.
She took the stage again later in the show, to perform another So Close to What track: "Dear god."
WATCH | Tate McRae performs 'Dear god' on SNL:
The last time McRae was on SNL was in November 2023, when she performed her breakout hit "Greedy." McRae is up for five awards at this year's Junos on March 30, for her 2023 album, Think Later.
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Winnipeg Free Press
3 days ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Thunderous approval for pop star Tate McRae at Canada Life Centre
Even if you think you've never heard of Tate McRae, you've definitely heard Tate McRae. The 22-year-old Calgary-born pop star is having a supernova moment. Her 2023 single Greedy continues to have a chokehold on pop radio. She is one of the Top 50 most-listened-to artists in the world on Spotify. She has had 21 (!) songs chart on the Billboard Top 100. People might know her better — or at least first — as a dancer. McRae also has the distinction of being the first Canadian finalist on the American reality series So You Think You Can Dance. She started posting songs to YouTube in 2019 and the rest, as they say, is history. Now, McRae's out on her three-continent Miss Possessive Tour — in support of her third album, this year's So Close To What — which brought her to Canada Life Centre on Saturday night. Starting with plenty of pyro and smoke right out of the gate, McRae let the anticipation build before taking the stage in a teeny white outfit for a slinky, sexy performance of Miss Possessive, flanked by a crew of impressive dancers. For an arena pop show, the stage set up was surprisingly spartan: a large T-shaped catwalk with a circular B stage, backed by three giant screens that had a few video interstitials but mostly showed what was going on onstage (her videographers were absolutely excellent). This allowed McRae to be the focus — her face, her voice, her choreography. And her hairography, of course; McRae's honey-coloured mane is a main character, and she loves an expertly-timed hair flip. McRae draws a lot of comparisons to Britney Spears, perhaps because she's a pop star who can actually dance and perhaps because, like Spears, McRae's also big into the breathy baby voice, or so-called cursive singing — a term that describes a vocal style in which certain vowels are elongated while the consonants are clipped. (It gets its name because it sounds like cursive writing.) Both qualities were on full display on Saturday night, though her vocals had far more power behind them live than their recorded counterparts might suggest, especially on Siren Sounds, for which she commanded the stage. The show mostly felt like a relentlessly paced, 95-minute Y2K-era music video: a lot of crawling around the stage on all-fours, plenty of head snaps, a full-on stripper pole for the R&B-inflected Uh Oh. But she offered glimpses of her other sides as an artist, too, taking the mic on the B-stage in a black gown for performances of Greenlight and a soaring Nostalgia before sitting down at a keyboard for a little medley that threw back to her YouTube days. A note here on the crowd: I don't think even the Winnipeg Whiteout games got this loud. CHRIS PIZZELLO / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES Tate McRae's vocals had far more power behind them live than their recorded counterparts. CHRIS PIZZELLO / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES Tate McRae's vocals had far more power behind them live than their recorded counterparts. The energy ramped back up before the show ended with a bang: an explosive rendition of Just Keep Watching, followed by the definitely Britney-indebted Sports Car (which featured a waterfall of sparks) and, of course, Greedy. A lot of culture critics (especially Elder Millennial ones) have spent the past couple of years dedicating a lot of pixels and podcast air to parsing the 'why' of McRae's fame. For my part, I think it simply comes down to the idea that not everything is for everyone, and that's fine. She's part of a rich tradition of generic pop music that people like because they can dance and sing along to it. Don't overthink it. Swedish pop star Zara Larsson opened the show with a set stepped in clubby early-aughts dance pop — right down to a cover of Britney Spears' Gimme More that gives the original a run for its money. But as a vocalist, Larsson evokes Christina Aguilera more than Britney. She's got a big, acrobatic voice, which was given a workout on the 2015 banger Lush Life and this year's Midnight Sun, the title track from her forthcoming fifth studio album, due out in September. The latter is a sweet ode to Sweden's long summer days, but it's also yet more proof that the Swedes sure know how to write a pop song. Larsson closed with her titanic 2017 hit Symphony, which had big headliner energy. Wednesdays What's next in arts, life and pop culture. Jen ZorattiColumnist Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen. Every piece of reporting Jen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
CTV News
4 days ago
- CTV News
Pete Davidson thought the star-studded audience at the ‘SNL50' special was ‘terrible'
Pete Davidson at "SNL50: The Anniversary Special" at 30 Rockefeller Plaza on February 16, in New York. (John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images via CNN Newsource) 'SNL50' was a historic broadcast which brought together past 'Saturday Night Live' hosts as well as former and current cast members to celebrate the monumental anniversary of the long-running NBC comedy show. But not everyone fully enjoyed it. 'As you know from 'SNL40'… terrible audience,' Pete Davidson, who was a cast member on 'SNL' from 2014 to 2022, told fellow former 'SNL'-er Seth Meyers on 'Late Night with Seth Meyers' on Thursday, in reference to the star-studded event celebrating the show's 50th anniversary that aired in February. 'It's a terrible audience 'cause it's just famous people, and famous people only like themselves,' he added. Davidson was in attendance in the audience but also took part in some of the skits performed during the run of the show. In spite of him not feeling his fellow audience members too much, there was at least one star that Davidson said he did enjoy. He sat beside the legendary Meryl Streep in the audience and told Meyers, 'Meryl rules.' 'In typical SNL fashion, they don't tell you anything. You don't even know what's going on,' Davidson said. 'I get to my seat and I just look and I'm like, 'This can't be right.'' And while the pair may have seemed like an odd couple, it sounds like it went well despite Davidson's amazement that she had been paired to sit with him. 'I'm like, 'I'm so sorry that I'm sitting next to you. You're the best,'' he said. 'And she's the best.' Like Davidson, Streep also took part in the on-air performances during 'SNL50,' making her debut on the sketch show as the mother of a legacy character played by Kate McKinnon. By Lisa Respers France, CNN
Edmonton Journal
4 days ago
- Edmonton Journal
Concert review: Alberta's own Tate McRae plays pop bangers and ballads to packed Edmonton crowd
Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Article content Dear Charlie Daniels: I'm writing you this letter hoping that it somehow gets to you in the beyond. Last night I went to see one of the bigger names in pop music. Her name is Tate McRae and we're kind of proud of her here in Alberta because she's one of us. Article content Article content She was born and raised in a province that doesn't have a lot of massive pop stars to boast about, and it's always nice to see someone from the city just a few hours south of you get ahead. Article content Now, you're probably asking me why I'm wanting to talk about pop music with a deceased country star? Valid question. You probably don't remember, but almost 15 years ago you and I had a conversation written up in this very newspaper where as an aside we discussed the young phenom that is Taylor Swift. It was a thoughtful chat where we talked about many things, including the question of Swift's audience. Article content I'm paraphrasing here, but I remember you saying 'she's not writing for you and me, she's writing for fans who are her own age' while you expressed admiration for her hard work. Now, I'm not bringing up Swift to compare her to McRae; they both approach their jobs quite differently. Article content But if you and I had been together in that extremely packed hockey arena on Thursday night for McRae's Miss Possessive Tour, overlooking a sea of young girls, I'm sure you would have turned and reminded me that this wasn't necessarily meant for us. Article content Article content 🕥️ It's 10:35 and our film photos from last night's @TateMcRae show just arrived 👀📷️ — Rogers Place (@RogersPlace) August 8, 2025 Article content Article content I would have agreed, but I also would have reminded you that pop music, as disposable as it is, will always have elements that appeal to all. Hooks, for one, and McRae's songwriting team has hooks to burn on tunes like Guilty Conscience, Greedy and She's All I Wanna Be. Much of the rest swam in a swamp in my head, one long song that fans could easily parse but I could not, except for pleasurable elements like the occasional low bass frequency. Article content Article content Charlie, I'm guessing that we would have agreed that the arc of the concert was perfectly designed with the audience in mind, pop bangers giving way to mid set ballads like Nostalgia and then up again. A true musical rollercoaster. But I'm not sure what you would have made of the stage show.
