Tate McRae has been named Billboard’s Women in Music Hitmaker, a fitting cap to a year that turned the 22-year-old from a fast-rising pop act into one of the genre’s defining young names. Her run stretched from her first Billboard Hot 100 appearance in 2020 to a chart-topping album in 2025, with a first No. 1 single arriving in May.
That climb has been hard to miss. McRae’s 2023 album Think Later was the breakthrough, but her 2025 release So Close to What went further, topping the Billboard 200 and sending songs including “Greedy,” “It’s Ok I’m Ok” and “Tit for Tat” into the Hot 100 top 20. Her Morgan Wallen collaboration “What I Want” became her first Hot 100 No. 1 in May, a milestone she said did not feel “out of the ordinary” because she once wrote “to only guitar in the studio,” which made the pairing feel natural.
That commercial rise came alongside a heavy touring year. McRae’s Miss Possessive arena tour had grossed $110.8 million by the time it was in the books in November, according to Billboard Boxscore, and the arena run put her in front of more than 10,000 screaming fans night after night. She said she is already back in the studio after the tour, which suggests the pace that carried her through 2025 is not slowing down.
McRae’s story also matters because it shows how quickly a carefully built pop career can move from online beginnings to mainstream dominance. Before the sleek videos, the arena show and the fierce alter ego she calls Tatiana, she was a preteen from Calgary, Alberta, writing songs at home and uploading them to YouTube. Her image now invites the kind of scrutiny that comes with stardom, including comparisons to Britney Spears and noisier online speculation about her politics and personal life, while McRae has spoken about the complicated way young female pop stars are sexualized.
For now, the facts point in one direction: McRae is no longer an artist waiting for a breakthrough. She has already had it, and Billboard’s honor is the industry’s way of acknowledging that her next chapter is the one everyone will be watching.
