Tate McRae is one of the most popular artists in the world — but millions of my peers have only the faintest idea of who she is. Alternately, they’re baffled by her. Is she Britney rebooted? Is she talented? What does she mean? Does it matter? After listening to Reanna Cruz guide listeners through McRae’s sound on Switched on Pop, I knew I wanted them to come on the show and work through more of McRae’s image. We talk about her sound, of course, but also consider her through the lens of her Canadianness, her Gen-Z-ness, her ‘organic’ songwriting success on YouTube, and her popular girl vibes.

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• Listen to the episode of Switched on Pop (re: Tate) that made me desperate to have Reanna come on the show

• Reanna on Twitter

• The referenced video for Sports Car which is trying to do….something

• Performing Greedy at the NHL All-Star Game:

  https://youtu.be/hq64R4RU1ms

• The goalie pads on the wrong legs on the album cover for Think Later:

• If you want a sense of McRae’s dancing start at the two-minute mark here:

  https://youtu.be/cr4wnsLI_Xw

• Very early McRae songwriting:

  https://youtu.be/pBk0VFLz9_s

• What 2000s pop culture did to women’s understanding of themselves

• What’s going on in AMERICAN PARENTING CULTURE (broadly conceived) right now (with Melissa Wenner Moyer!)

• TEXAS Culture, MONTANA Culture, and MONTREAL/Québécois Culture for our ongoing culture-of-place series (different eps don’t worry)

• Evangelical Summer Camp, past and present

• How/Why Private Equity is Fucking Everything Up

• The intersection of technology and parenting

• Dark Academia (as in, the literary genre)

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here