The Singles Jukebox

Not an Ariana Grande cover, but the enunciation isn’t much better…

[Video]
[5.00]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Largely indistinguishable from the fake pop songs on The Idol.
[3]

Leah Isobel: Tate McRae is 20 – old enough to embrace sexuality, young enough that she’s still exploring its effects. “greedy” indicates both, its chorus driven by the novelty of being able to see yourself as a desirable object and by the fractured emotions attendant to that realization. She might embody the latter a little too well; her mushmouthed, cotton-candy voice throws off sparks on the chorus but dissolves into nothing when the verses send her into her lower register. What lingers isn’t bravado or pleasure, but anxiety: when she hums “baby, please believe me,” it’s like it’s directed inward. Please, say it right. Please, deliver what’s desired in this moment. Please, let me get what I’m not sure that I want. I am very, very happy that I’m no longer 20.
[5]

Ian Mathers: I was the only blurber here to love McRae and Khalid’s “Working” (a song that has only grown in my estimation since), and that was entirely down to the subtlety, generosity, and maturity of its message and emotional range. I haaaaated the next time we covered McRae and my entire blurb was about disliking her singing style. Doing an A/B comparison between that song and this one I do think whatever was bugging me (which I still don’t like!) is either less pronounced here or works better in “Greedy.” But as opposed to something like “Working” there’s nothing particularly distinctive or compelling to this one for me, indicating that at least right now she’s more than capable of excelling on good material but maybe not so much of elevating average material. Wouldn’t touch that dial though.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: The most memorable thing about “Greedy” is how hilariously mismatched the Darrin’s Dance Grooves choreo is to the vibe of the song. (2023 songs the choreography would actually fit: “Padam Padam”; “Padam Padam”; maybe others.)
[5]

Michael Hong: Sometimes, “you broke me first” comes on the radio and I just feel so bad for her — she sounds so small, so miniscule, I just want to hold her. I like the zamboni of its music video, a really fun “I’m Canadian” statement, but the nasal quality of her voice does nothing for me here.
[4]

Aaron Bergstrom: Real commitment to the hockey theme here, singing the whole song with her mouthguard still in like that.
[2]

Nortey Dowuona: Stop being greedy/give to the needy. Tate sounds so confident on this record she can’t be bothered to give the Gus Johnson lookalike in this song an actual name. Her voice is still cutesy and pinched, constantly pushed into the upper range of her nasally soprano, but once it’s layered and compressed to stamp the hook into the brain, it becomes lighter and seethes, disgusted by the unappealing attention he tries to ensnare her. It’s probably the embarrassing experience of Jasper Harris or Ryan Tedder, or the lived experience of Tate or Amy Allen, who has written “Graveyard”, “Adore You” and “Without Me”, all vivid songs with tight hooks which stamp on your brain just as this does. But I can’t tell if I love or just like this song, it really depends on the day. So now it’s a –
[6]

Brad Shoup: We have Nelly Furtado ft. Timbaland at home!
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Tate McRae’s garbled singing is gerbil-coded. It’s partly the AutoTune, partly because it’s squeaky and small. Like, whenever the chorus comes in, I get the overwhelming sense that the songwriters tried to mask her limited vocal range. At least it’s pitiable.
[2]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Looks like Tate McRae inherited the Ariana-Grande mumble-mouth gene for making a chorus sound pretty and unintelligible in one breathe. The lyrical conceit of “Greedy” makes little sense, but that matters little when the song is mostly a vehicle for Tate McRae to show off her dance skills and theater kid emotions. 
[6]

Taylor Alatorre: The basic structure of “greedy,” with its neatly divided “he said” verses and “she said” chorus, makes it hard for me to see it as something other than the “Jerk Store” of pop songs. Unless we’re really meant to believe that Tate McRae is saying things like “I’ll put you through hell” in a public setting, a scene that would be laughed out of the writers’ room of even the corniest teen drama. I do admire, though, the kind of obstinate creative logic that leads a singer to emulate Timbaland not merely or even primarily in his production style, but also in his underratedly weird stop-start way of delivering lyrics. Shock Value III when?
[4]

Hannah Jocelyn: I’ve been rooting for Tate McRae despite all the reasons I shouldn’t – she sounds like one of the mice from Cinderella, she brings little new to pop music, and yet she has her place as Olivia Rodrigo’s bratty younger sister the way Rodrigo was initially pitched as one to Taylor Swift. I actually love how whiny she is – I find that more relatable than people who actually strive for relatability, and I don’t even mean that condescendingly. She’s kooky enough to have an entire alter ego named Tatiana, where she moves from Eilish and Rodrigo to Spears and Furtado. She’s not as distinctive as any of them, but muscular production from Ryan Tedder (!) gives the illusion she holds her own. I’ve heard people say she sounds scared instead of assertive, and while I hear that, it adds palpable stakes to the song, however intentionally. But I also liked the last darker-and-edgier artist reboot no one else did, so what do I know?
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: The vocal distortion is elevated by its sparkle, but compounded by McRae’s mumbles, which obscure any attitude she intends to project. “In your face” is a stance to take; not a place to hide your syllables.
[6]

Will Adams: Such an interesting approach to vowels. I await our next pop star who fully sounds like Homestar Runner.
[4]

Harlan Talib Ockey: Tate McRae has somehow had a drastically different personality on every single of hers I have heard. Part of this may be down to her voice, which is pretty texturally unusual (underneath the bananies and avocadies) and possibly too oily to have a full-belt setting. “Greedy” is where she seems to have found the formula that works; McRae really suits this “Promiscuous” update where she can use a little more of her head voice.
[7]

Oliver Maier: Greedy for what, bananies and avocadies? Lol. Apologies to miss McRae. The song is quite good.
[6]

Kayla Beardslee: I’m a little surprised this song blew up, because I’ve listened to it several times and still cannot make out half the lyrics in the chorus (“I would want myself, the reason bleeblee”??). But we’re starved for new pop stars right now, so any fresh hit that gets people talking about pop girl potential is a net positive.
[5]

Jackie Powell: It takes around 5 seconds for “Greedy” to send me back in time. The beat drops after the steel drum-sounding intro and the unknown voice shouting “Whoop,” a classic ad-lib in the pop/ R&B crossover space. Nelly Furtado or rather her influence has somehow returned around 17 years later in 2023. That “Promiscuous” sounding beat sticks out immediately and Ryan Tedder knew that it would. It was amusing to see in the liner notes that “Promiscuous” was given a sample credit, almost a preventative measure. Gasp, there can’t be another Gen Zer taking rhythmic elements from the 2000s without giving proper credit. “Greedy” is a smash and has the potential to launch McRae to greater heights. (I’ll still remember “She’s All I Wanna Be”, which was far superior.) An underrated part of the production is that rhythmic steel drum-sounding intro which finds its way throughout the entire song. McRae imitates the part’s rhythm when she confidently vocalizes the different vowels in “Uh-uh, uh-uh-uh, uh-uh”. While McRae’s vocal tone is reminiscent of Camilla Cabello or Melanie Martinez, she’s a much more expressive performer. There’s an assurance that’s way beyond her years in how she’s able to communicate the story she’s trying to tell. There’s something empowering about a song with a killer beat all about how men can be creepy and aren’t entitled to the allure of the women around them. She’s 20 years old and singing about this! Speaking of her age and maturity, McRae has been deemed Gen Z’s Brittney Spears, or the heir apparent to Spears. There’s something incredibly unsettling about that. The similarities are apparent: both are trained dancers, both appeared on children’s television (McRae voiced a LaLaLoopsy doll) both have huskiness attached to their vocal ranges and both have a command of their sexuality, which makes them both such captivating live performers. So what’s unsettling about that? McRae is making her climb to the top with tools that Spears didn’t have. Spears didn’t have the prior credibility that McRae has. Placing third on So You Think You Can Dance and her self written and performed song “One Day” add much more to the McRae story than we ever had about Spears during the days of “Oops, I did it again.” McRae won’t have to deal with critics claiming she doesn’t have talent. The evidence of her talent is all over the internet. During her live performances, she finds a way to maintain that credibility as well. She doesn’t lip-sync but rather picks her spots with a backing track. She makes sure she has a moment to really dance full force to the music she just sang by adding an outro. These are tactics that Brittney Spears and her team either didn’t think of or weren’t really possible in the early 2000s. If we are transporting back to 2000s pop, I hope we also don’t transport back to 2000s celebrity culture, a truly *dark* time in music.
[8]