Tate McRae – Tit for Tat

Checking off our monthly CanCon quota!

[Video]
[5.22]

Julian Axelrod: Tate McRae and The Kid Laroi are no Beyonce and Jay-Z (or even Lily Allen and David Harbour), but there’s still a satisfying schadenfreude to a pop star musically eviscerating her famous ex over cheerleader chants and car alarm synths. The title positions the song as “Not Like Us” for people who tried the Jay Shetty Erewhon smoothie, but there’s genuine pathos in a line like “Last night she answered my call, it sealed the deal,” which feels like your friend’s most cryptic Instagram caption.
[7]

Al Varela: I didn’t realize people cared about Tate McRae and The Kid Laroi’s two-second romance to give a song this mediocre a huge debut. Feels like we’re buying into jingling keys. Points for “That’s the best you got? Where the good one at?” being pretty funny, but that’s it.
[4]

Alfred Soto: I’m surprised how little there I hear in this single by the Canadian phenomenon: a vaporous vocal that crosses small Grande-isms and a Tinashe melody. Maybe she worked with Morgan Wallen because she needs all the help she can get.
[3]

Nortey Dowuona: (starts listening) Huh, Ryan Tedder produced this. Sounds interest– wait? What is this 2018 trap pattern doing here? (checks credits again) Nobody else was producing it? Just Ryan? (listens for a while more) The synthesizers are kinda thin and unable to support the melody. They don’t feel bright and lush, or heavy and dark, just– (hears vocoded vocals possibly from McRae & Julia Michaels) Well, that was a nice touch. Thank you, Grant Boutin. (song starts again) Hold up, let’s not.
[4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: As a long-time Tate McRae skeptic (isn’t it incredible that we’re a half decade into the Tate McRae era?), I’ve found her most effective when she’s making strange, formless, somewhat industrial dirges. In conditions like these — last year’s “2 Hands,” for one — her limitations as a vocalist and presence are masked; she’s just another swirling element in a turbid mixture. Here, she’s even more submerged than usual. She whispers and chants, but never fully breaks through the haze. It works as a tonal piece; this isn’t some great feat of songwriting, but it captures a certain mood of malaise well.
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Leah Isobel: Diet Tinashe.
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Katherine St. Asaph: When I don’t have much to say about real-world pop songs, I sometimes turn to the fake ones — like the fictional discographies of “anonymous” YA book Confessions of a Backup Dancer, which lovingly itemizes its fake pop stars’ minor singles and their double-entendre song titles: “View from the Top” (“…makes me pop”), “Carpe Diem (Seize Me)”, “Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.” “Tit for Tat” would fit right in. Where it wants to fit in are the diss-track slugfests of the past few years, by Kendrick/Drake and such. But, well, one must set one’s expectations properly.
[5]

Ian Mathers: Okay, I’m giving her an extra point because I looked up who her ex is that she’s threatening to go “song for song” with, and I think he’s a dipshit. McRae would win that handily to my ears, even before we add in the one where he whines about being unable to “fix” her, which she justifiably and angrily throws in his face.
[7]

Will Adams: Point against: makes me listen to a Kid Laroi song for additional context. Point for: with its declawed swipes and vague grievances, serves as an interesting counterpoint to the diaristic take on a recent tabloidy breakup song in Lily Allen (stay tuned). Point for and/or against: makes me nostalgic for Eamon and Frankee. Where does that leave me?
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