Tate McRae Responds to Backlash Over Morgan Wallen Duet: "One Song Can't Define a Whole Person"

Tate McRae just landed her first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 with“What I Want,”her 2025 collaboration with Morgan Wallen. The milestone should be a pure celebration, but the team-up quickly sparked backlash, with fans questioning what the pairing said about McRae’s politics. Now she’s addressing it head-on in a new W cover story.

In the interview, published Tuesday, Oct. 13, McRae pushed back on the idea that a single collaboration carries that much weight.“It’s crazy to think that one song could define a whole person,”she said, adding that most of her personality is still unknown to a large chunk of her audience. On where her politics actually live, she said she shows them through the organizations she supports and the environment she builds on tour.

Context matters here. Wallen has never publicly shared his political beliefs, but he apologized in 2021 for using the N-word, which fueled the reaction to the duet. McRae previously told Billboard that writing the song with him felt natural because she once wrote to only a guitar. So what do you think: can one collaboration really define who an artist is? Drop your take in the comments.