One Day

Album: The One Day LP (2017)

Songfacts®:

  • Tate McRae was just 14 on October 20, 2017, when she posted a video of her performing "One Day" at home on a keyboard. It was part of her "Create With Tate" series on YouTube, which was mostly dance videos - by this time she had already competed on So You Think You Can Dance, where she finished third. Her very first YouTube video, posted in 2011 when she was 7, was also of her performing a song she wrote, but "One Day" was a lot more refined and by that time she had a substantial following.

    Surprisingly, the video took off, quickly tallying over 40 million views. McRae then produced a more polished version of the song that was released on the Canadian indie label Nettwerk (McRae is from Calgary) on December 28, 2017. She followed with more songs on her channel that garnered a few million views each and were self-released by McRae. In 2019 she signed with RCA Records, which issued her first major-label single, "You Broke Me First," the following year.
  • The song is age appropriate, with McRae singing from the perspective of a love-struck high-school girl who can't find the courage to meet the gaze of the guy she's into. She told the story of the song in the YouTube video where she performed it:

    "This song that I'm about to sing for you guys is something I whipped up last night in like an hour. I don't know what head space I was in, but I just needed to get something out of me, and I just whipped this out. I don't really know where it came from because it's about love, and I'm currently not in love. I've had crushes in my life, but I'm just focused on my passions and my dancing and singing and acting, so I'm not boy crazy right now."
  • Tate McRae wrote the song herself, but two seasoned pros - fellow Canadians Kristian Alexandrov and Beau Shiminsky - helped her put together the studio version of the song, and they share writing credits with her on that rendition. Shiminsky is credited as the producer. Those two were part of McRae's musical team before she signed with RCA Records.
  • The song appears on McRae's 2021 compilation The One Day LP, which also includes eight other songs from her time as a rising indie artist.

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