In Tate McRae’s December feature with Rolling Stone, she opened up about all things related to music and tour, but she got real about the personal stuff, too — including her breakup with The Kid Laroi. The pair first sparked dating rumors at the beginning of 2024 and later confirmed their relationship, but by the summer of 2025, Tate McRae and The Kid Laroi were confirmed to have split.
In the interview, McRae reflected about her time on the So Close to What tour, elaborating upon her time in Europe. “I had been traveling so much, and I felt like I was spreading myself thin, and I had no idea what was going on in my core,” she shared. “I was going through a lot emotionally,” she continued, hinting at her break up with Laroi.
McRae confirmed their June breakup with the outlet, and three months later, she dropped the Tatiana-coded hit “Tit for Tat,” which was speculated to be a response to Laroi’s “A Cold Play.” McRae even revealed on her Instagram Story on the release day of “Tit for Tat” that she wrote it two weeks prior on tour in Nashville in September. “Finding inspiration everywhere I go,” she wrote.
After the track was dropped, fans speculated that the song was written about Laroi, especially given the parallels between “Tit for Tat” and his track, “A Cold Play.” In the chorus of Laroi’s song, he repeats, “Fix you, fix you, fix you, fix you / Fix you, fix you, fix you, wish I could.” Meanwhile, in “Tit for Tat,” McRae sings, “Let’s go song for song, let’s go back to back / Fix your f*cking self, kiss my ass for that / That’s the best you got, where’s the good one at? / Should’ve known you’d be the type to change.” In these two tracks, it was evident the two artists were going “song for song.”Â
With Rolling Stone, McRae elaborated on how strange it was to have a bunch of adults care about the details of her relationship, and the reality of the aftermath of a relationship between two musicians.
“It was really scary and overwhelming,” McRae said. “I would never talk that way, even about my friends’ lives. I didn’t realize how much it would affect me, the public knowing my private life — because no one knows the full story of anything, ever. I also hate people painting a situation that’s worse than it is. But what I’ve had to realize is that he’s going to write songs and I’m going to write songs, and that’s our way of expressing ourselves. That’s our art, that’s our job. And once it’s out there, it’s not mine anymore.”
McRae’s words remind everyone how important it is to consider how there’s a real person behind the lyrics of every song.