If many of you are like me, Tate McRae has been your latest obsession; her new album “So Close to What” dropped a little over a month ago on February 21st, 2025. This album alone has been on repeat on Spotify and my CD player for the past month since it came out. For those of you who also like to collect physical media, for certain artists, there have been known to be some differences between the tracklists from the CD vs. the tracklist from Spotify or another online streaming service. Since I preordered the CD before the album was released, I was shocked when it came in the mail, and there were several noticeable differences between the version I listened to on Spotify vs. the CD I had just received. While there may be more differences I happened not to notice, here is a compiled list of the major differences between the physical and digital versions of “So Close to What.”
- CD/Vinyl Exclusive songs:
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While listening to my CD copy of “So Close to What” for the first time, I noticed 2 songs that I did not recognize from the version I had listened to on Spotify. On Tate’s website, it lists the 2 songs and also mentions that these 2 songs are solely exclusive to CD and Vinyl variants and are not available digitally. The songs “Better Than I Was” and “Call My Bluff” can only be listened to if you own the vinyl or CD version of this album, which can be frustrating for some, and others may be indifferent to this difference in Tate’s tracklist between physical media and streaming.
- Digital exclusive songs:
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Similarly to noticing the songs not included on the digital version of the album I listened to on Spotify, I also noticed quite a few songs missing from my CD copy of the album. While “Better Than I Was” and “Call My Bluff” are solely exclusive to CD and vinyl, there are several songs strictly exclusive to digital copies of Tate’s album. An interesting thing I noticed about 2 of the songs missing from the CD is that they are the only 2 songs that have another artist featured on the track. These 2 songs are “I know love featuring The Kid LAROI” and “bloodonmyhands featuring Flo Milli,” and I find it strange how Tate McRae purposefully excluded these 2 songs from the physical media variants of her new album. The other 2 songs that are also digitally exclusive are “Like I Do” and “Means I Care.” On the CD, these 2 songs are replaced by the 2 CD-exclusive songs not available on digital streaming. In addition to these 4 songs not included on the CD and vinyl variants, there is another song released later than the album itself that is marked as a “bonus” song. “Siren Sounds (bonus)” is yet another song that is digitally exclusive.
- Different versions of the same song:
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This last peculiarity I noticed about the differences between the 2 versions of “So Close To What” is the most interesting in my opinion. While the songs “Miss Possessive” and “Sports Car” are both featured on the CD/vinyl as well as digitally, there are slight variations in the CD versions that are not available on digital streaming. Starting off with “Miss Possessive,” while the difference is not significant, it is definitely noticeable since it is at the start of the song. As some of you may know, an early version of the album was leaked prior to its release, which is what caused some of the songs to be changed for the final version. Although I am unsure if this was the reason for this specific change, on the digital version of the song before Tate starts singing, there is a brief cameo of Sydney Sweeney saying “No, seriously, get your hands off my man” while on the CD version it is solely instrumental before Tate begins singing. On the other hand, “Sports Car” has a much more noticeable difference between the version on the CD/vinyl vs. the version on digital streaming platforms. As I previously mentioned, due to the album getting leaked she decided to make some changes to the album. “Sports car” along with “It’s ok, I’m ok” were released as singles before the release of the album. While “It’s ok, I’m ok” remained the same, Tate made some significant changes to the version of “Sports Car” featured on CD and vinyl. First of all, the instrumental on the CD version is not as edited and does not have any echoing effects or substantial editing, unlike the version released digitally with the album. This is largely due to the fact that the version that made it onto the CD was the version that got leaked, therefore causing Tate to change it for the official release of the album. While the chorus remains the same between the 2 versions, there is a verse that was changed entirely for the digital version of the song. The lyrics that come after “thinking about what we did before this verse” on the digital version are “on the corner of the bed, oh, and maybe on the beach, you can do it on your own while you’re looking at me,” then leads into the chorus. On the other hand, in the original version of “Sports Car” featured on the CD and vinyl variants, after the lyric “thinking about what we did before this verse,” comes a revamped version of the chorus, including more backing vocals and a slightly different backing track as well. The ending of the song also includes fewer vocals and a more “funky” instrumental, as well as a slight variation on the chorus ending from the new version that was published digitally.
All in all, I really enjoyed both versions of the album, and the bonus of owning the CD and digital streaming access is that I can choose when to listen to either version of the album. While some of the differences are barely noticeable, like the “Miss Possessive” intro, and others have significant differences, the 2 variations of “Sports Car,” it can be a fun little easter egg trying to spot all the differences between the 2 different versions of the album! However, while writing this article, it got me wondering, which versions and songs will she perform during the Miss Possessive Tour? I guess we will find out in the upcoming months!