On 'So Close to What,' Tate McRae Turns Her Growing Pains Into ...

Here, McRae talks to Vogue about navigating her rapid ascent to fame, the role fashion plays within her creative process—and why ending up with a couple of bruises after filming one of her highly choreographed music videos is always worth it in the end.

Vogue: I was looking back at your schedule over the past two years, and my first question was: Where on earth did you find the time to make this album? You were touring Think Later all the way up to November of last year. When did all this happen?

Tate McRae: That’s a really great question. [Laughs.] Honestly, whenever I had a moment off the road, I was just in the studio. I think as a dancer I’m inherently a workaholic, so time off doesn’t suit me very well. Any time that I wasn’t traveling or touring or doing shows, I was developing the songwriter side of me, which is so different than that touring energy. Being on the road is such an interesting thing. You’re on every single day, giving and performing and putting yourself on display—it feels like one of the most revealing things ever. You’re putting yourself out there to be judged every night, which is weird for the brain to process. You definitely have to be in a certain mode to handle that, and so it can be strange to switch back to the songwriter mode, who is more like my genuine, actual self and feels a bit more connected with reality.

And when you’re going on stage, you’re mostly performing these songs that you maybe wrote two years ago, when you were in a totally different headspace…

For sure. I always find it so interesting because when you’re writing the music, you feel like you’re changing as a person, and as a songwriter, and you forget that everyone else hasn’t heard it yet. So you always feel like you’re six months, a year, two years ahead of your perception of yourself and everybody else’s perception of you. You can feel like you’re growing and changing, but you haven’t quite given it to the world yet, and that can be a mindfuck.

When you’re in tour mode, is it ever difficult to detach from that and go off and live your life a little bit, so that you have something to write about?