Before her 2024 world tour had wrapped up, Tate McRae already had thoughts on how to level up her next live outing. “It’s a lot of back and forth and a lot of just brain dumping,” she says of her scattered ideating process with her creative director, Parker Genoway. “I come with a whole bunch of mood boards and random ideas… You dream as big as you can until you get the budget, then you have to narrow it down.”
Fortunately for McRae, that budget expanded, thanks to a massive first quarter of 2025. The 21-year-old singer’s So Close to What, her most mature and introspective album to date, arrived in February and gave McRae her first No. 1 entry on the Billboard 200, with 177,000 equivalent album units earned — which at the time was the largest debut week for a studio album by a woman artist in five months — according to Luminate.
The chart-topping debut — along with a dozen Billboard Hot 100 entries from So Close to What and a high-octane performance of top 20 hit “Sports Car” on Saturday Night Live — helped cement McRae’s leap to pop’s A-list. It also set up her Miss Possessive arena tour, which began in Mexico City on March 18 and was followed by a handful of South American dates. She will head to Europe in May and will begin a North American run in Vancouver in August.
McRae pulled from a wide range of influences for her tour themes, including classic dance showcases. “It’s been really fun to dive into old musicals and old TV shows,” she says, “and bring out Fosse references and old Chicago references, and tap into that geeky musical side I think we all have.”
Meanwhile, Genoway — who collaborated with McRae on her Think Later tour and spearheaded her SNL and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon performances earlier this year — points to McRae’s “It’s ok I’m ok” music video as an example of the singer’s opposing aesthetics, showcasing the intersection of grungy and glamorous. McRae says, “I’m referencing rap shows, I’m referencing Kendrick [Lamar] shows, Post Malone shows, and then I want to feel like a glam pop girl. It’s finding a cool in-between.”
The new tour includes a “thrust stage” in the shape of a giant T, and there are also cranes involved. “You try to make people walk in and be like, ‘What are we looking at right now?,’ and create your own world in there,” McRae says. Genoway adds that McRae should “feel like she’s in the middle of everything” surrounding the show, which also includes a B-stage and a mix of stage elevations.
As for McRae’s dance skills, “[Her] technical ability is unmatched,” says Genoway, who works as part of Silent House Productions. “Tate levels everyone up who works with her. She’s going to be at rehearsals late at night and so are you. She’s going to work hard and so are you.”
And although McRae is playing her biggest venues to date, her preshow routine has remained consistent. “I always take one Grether’s Pastille and suck on it,” she explains. Prior to a group prayer and a moment of meditation, McRae will warm up her voice by performing the ad-libs to Rihanna’s “B—h Better Have My Money.” “My dancers probably think I’m f–king crazy,” she says with a chuckle.
This story appears in the March 22, 2025, issue of Billboard.