Tate McRae is ready to tell her side of the story. A bit after she and The Kid Laroi broke up in the summer, Laroi released a pointed single called “A Cold Play” in early September. About three weeks later, McRae has now dropped her first song since the split, and it sounds like a direct response to Laroi’s lyrics.
From its title alone, “Tit for Tat” is clearly inspired by revenge. But the very specific lyrics are what have fans convinced McRae is taking aim at Laroi’s own musical statement. On “A Cold Play,” Laroi painted a picture of himself as a a heartbroken ex still yearning to fix things with McRae: “I still love you, that’s how I feel at my core / Flew different states to come see you in between tour / I gave you everything I had and even more.”
But on “Tit for Tat,” McRae shuts down her ex’s advances: “Thought I might love you again, see how I feel / Now that you’re acting like that, I never will / Last night, she answered my call, it sealed the deal / Right now, I’m not even about you.”
She also seems to respond to Laroi’s lyric about the distance between them — “Now you takin’ distance and it’s hard to take,” he sings — with her “Tit for Tat” line, “I was never as far away as you thought.”
But the standout “Tit for Tat” verse comes in the pre-chorus, when McRae sings, “Fix your f*cking self, kiss my *ss for that.” The remark clearly seems to be a retort to the “A Cold Play” chorus, in which Laroi sings, “It’s my fault for thinking I could fix you,” before repeating “fix you” multiple times.
If there was any doubt left that “Tit for Tat” was written as a response to “A Cold Play,” McRae herself all but confirmed it by sharing the song’s timeline. “Wrote this song two weeks ago,” McRae posted to Instagram upon her single’s Sept. 26 release. So, yes, “Tit for Tat” was fully created a couple of days after “A Cold Play” was released.
And now, fans will wait to see if this musical battle between the exes will continue.
