I’ll tell you why Tate is getting hate

I left this comment in a post but I think it deserves its own post. Everyone is wondering why Tate seems to be getting so much criticism lately with her new found style. Obviously a lot of it is just down to having more eyes on her so inevitably more hate.

But I’ll tell you the reason there’s so much criticism.

Tate makes good music . It’s clear who her influences are and she’s pulling directly from a specific early 2000s pop rnb era and she’s doing it well enough ( though I would argue some of the music feels more plagiaristic than inspired sometimes)

The issue is , it doesn’t feel true to her. She doesn’t seem like a baddie who gets steamy in a sports car. She doesn’t seem like a sexy vixen who would ‘put someone through hell just to get to know her’ . She seems like a regular nice girl from Canada who likes to do contemporary dancing and write heartfelt guitar music.

We are very good at sensing a lack of authenticity and I think this is the isssue tate is facing. We are just not convinced she is who her music says she is.

I’m all for bringing back the style of music Tate is doing but I think it would’ve been more effective if it was done by someone who it comes more naturally to. Someone like a Tyla who has a fiery personality and is bold and confident with natural sex appeal would probably have been more convincing. And this truly isn’t just about looks or aesthetic cos Tate is clearly a very beautiful and sexy woman.

I also don’t think Tate has studied the culture around the music she’s making. I know this because I saw a video of her choreographer saying she had never seen Beyoncé’s crazy in love music video. That is like a staple ‘iconic pop diva’ reference video and the fact it hadn’t been in her world and she hadn’t stumbled across it yet proves to me she isn’t well versed on the style and culture of the music she’s mimicking. It hasn’t been a prominent influence in her life until now it seems. I’m Not convinced she ever was a student in the school of stars like cassie, Nelly furtado, early Beyoncé, early Britney, early pussycat dolls , keri hilson, kelis, fergie, ciara etc. The artists that actually pioneered this style of music!

Notice how no one had as much criticism when Tate was making songs like ‘she’s all I wanna be’ and you broke me first- it felt true to her and genuine. I get that artists grow and change but this feels like greedy was a one off fun experiment in the studio with Ryan Tedder and because it did so well, it made sense to fully pivot into this style and occupy a space that was vacant in modern pop music. Which is smart.

Either way, she’s clearly still killing it and seems to have a huge huge backing from her label/industry.