A Conversation with Macy Gray – HuffPost 3.28.12

Mike Ragogna: Hello to Macy Gray.

Macy Gray: Hi!

MR: Macy, first of all, how have you been, everything’s great?

MG: Yeah, everything is really good.

MR: Great. This time out, you decided to do an album of covers called, well, Covered. What were you thinking with this one?

MG: I’ve always wanted to do a covers album, we finally did one, and it was a big deal about what kind of songs to do. I thought there were a couple things that would be obvious like if I did old soul records or R&B covers, so we did rock records because I’m a big rock ‘n’ roll (fan), and then it was a matter of what rock records to do. We mostly did modern stuff that just came out last year and goes all the way back to the Eurythmics, a 1985 song. We did “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica, so it’s like the past, say, 25 years of really good rock ‘n’ roll songs that we covered.

MR: Yeah, you covered Metallica, you did “Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance, and also you did “Creep” by Radiohead.

MG: We’ve been doing “Creep” live for a long time, so it made sense to do that one.

MR: Yeah, there’s also a very cute “song” on here, “Lalala,” by Teaching the Kids. What’s that track’s approach about?

MG: We actually have these really hilarious skits on the album. The kids on one of them are friends of my daughter, friends from high school. We have Nicole Scherzinger on a skit, she’s doing these crazy imitations, the funniest things you’ll ever hear. Then we have MC Lyte and Jay-Z upping the enthusiasm. It’s a very entertaining album, but the music is awesome. We did everything live, everybody plugged in and recorded at the same time. It’s live like we did it back in the old days, produced by Hal Willner and Sue, and it’s just a great album. I love listening to it.

MR: You also covered “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire, the Eurythmics, “Here Comes the Rain Again,” and a cover of Sublime’s “Smoke Two Joints.” How are you relating to these covers? Are there memories associated?

MG: Yeah, definitely, there are always memories attached to the songs. When you hear a song, I always remember a moment that you have with it. A lot of it mostly was lyrics that were very important to me, and a lot of it was songs that secretly I would like to pull off. There are a lot of great songs out there, but some of them should just be left alone, and some of them, I didn’t sound very good on at all. So, those were the ones that came out the best and that I felt I could interpret and make my own.

MR: Macy, you have a history of being self-deprecating about your voice, when everybody loves it.

MG: It’s hilarious, I know.

MR: (laughs) Let’s get a little history lesson as far as Macy Gray. What got you into music?

MG: I studied piano lessons when I was 7, I did that until I was 14, but I hated it so much. When I got to college, I met a boy, he was a guitar player. He had a studio in his room, and I used to do music all day just so I could be around him. I got really obsessed with music all of a sudden – I started writing, I sang in his band, and one thing led to another, and I started my own band a couple years later. We were playing at The Roxy in Los Angeles and an A&R guy from Atlantic signed me there. That record didn’t come out, but I did a record on Sony two years later called How Life Is and that did really well.

MR: Right, and you of course wrote the Black Eyed Peas song “Love Won’t Wait.”

MG: Yes.

MR: Then there was “I Try.” Were you surprised it was such big hit?

MG: I was really shocked. We were out on the road and we had gone to Europe. I was in Europe for the first time, I had three kids with me. All my buddies were in my van, and the label bought me a new car, so I was in heaven. I didn’t really need anything else. My manager calls me and says that the song was #1. I was really excited but I felt busy on the road, it was my first #1, but I really didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t really go crazy until I got home and got mauled in New York, and that’s when I really realized that people knew who I was. But I wasn’t really shocked when it hit, though.

MR: And you also must have been in heaven when you get your Grammy nomination.

MG: Yeah, all that, it was like one shock after another. I think the cool thing was that I wasn’t expecting anything. My first week of sales, I sold 9,000 copies and I was ecstatic because I had never sold a record before. Everything that happened after was just juice. I wasn’t really expecting any of it.

MR: The other part of this history lesson is that you’ve been in a few films, and one of them was Spider-Man where you played yourself.

MG: That was difficult, I wasn’t really prepared for that role.

MR: (laughs) And you were also in Training Day.

MG: Yes, Training Day. We did Idlewild, I did Domino with Tony Scott and Keira Knightley. I’ve done some really good movies – Lackawanna Blues… I’ve been lucky.

MR: Yeah, you’ve been blessed. Getting back to Covered, I’m imaging over the years, you were learning a lot of the songs at the time that they were hits, right?

MG: Right.

MR: So when you sat back and listened to Covered top to bottom, was it kind of like looking at a photo album?

MG: Yeah, I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but I definitely have a lot of visuals that come to mind when I hear “Hear Comes the Rain,” or definitely the first time I listened to “Nothing Else Matters.” I remember that. All of them. “Bubbly” is on there by Colbie Caillat and I really love that song. I think that’s a personal thing with everybody. When you have a song, it brings something to mind.

MR: How do you approach your arrangements, are you the main person coming in there with ideas?

MG: No, I have a really intense band and they do most of the arrangements, even though I direct a little bit. I say “I like this, I don’t like this,” but they really come up with the best ideas, way better than mine.

MR: Are you entrenched in each song to the point where you are the character of the song, maybe losing yourself in it?

MG: Oh yeah, always. I always seem to take them to heart. The cool thing about those songs is that I had a personal connection to them, so it wasn’t hard. I do think it’s important that when you sing a song that it means everything to you, because if it doesn’t, it’s definitely going to affect the way you sing.

MR: What’s your favorite song on Covered?

MG: I really like “Love Lockdown,” the mash-up. I love that song.

MR: Yeah, the Nina Simone song. Is she one of your favorite artists?

MG: Yeah, absolutely, I learned a lot from her. She has this cover of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”; it’s big-band jazz, it’s crazy. Actually, when I heard that, that gave me the confidence to do my record because she made it completely her own and I think a lot of people do covers and think that they have to be loyal to the song and do things over. But after I saw that, I thought, “I’m going to go off and to do my own thing.” That’s really what made the record happen.

MR: So that was an inspiration on how you would approach covers. Let’s take the other side of that question, about your own original material. What is your creative process?

MG: I just lock-up myself in the studio and just start writing. You just pull your heart out, really, if you’re in a tangle. That’s the best thing you can do.

MR: Do you find yourself working on piano, or is it in your head and you have to get to an instrument to write it down?

MG: Yeah, a lot of songs pop into my head all the time. If I don’t remember them, I figure that maybe they weren’t that great. The ones I remember, those are the ones I usually record. I play a little bit of guitar, I know about six chords on the guitar, so anytime I write a song with music, I use the guitar because it’s portable. But I wrote “I Try” on the guitar. At the time, those were the only three chords I knew, A and E.

MR: Macy, do you have other favorites of your originals?

MG: My favorite songs that I’ve ever done are probably “Caligula” and “I’ve Committed Murder,” both from the first album. I have a song on my last album called “Sellout,” and a song called “Let You In,” I love that.

MR: What advice might you have for new artists?

MG: I’m not a good advice-giver, actually. But I would just tell anybody if you really want to do it, you just have to pull your heart out at all times and be completely open. Scream when you want to, and write when you want to, and you should be alright.

MR: Is that what you would tell the young Macy Gray?

MG: Yes. I would say, “Do and say the things that you truly feel.”

MR: That’s basically what you’ve been doing your whole career, right?

MG: Yeah there’s no other way, really, for me anyway.

MR: OK, so also as far as a new project beyond Covered, have you been collecting your original material for a new album?

MG: Yeah, that’s ready to go already because I write all the time so I have tons of songs ready to go. I actually wrote a song last night, which I wish I could put on the radio right now.

MR: Yeah, we wouldn’t want you to hum a little of it or anything. (laughs)

MG: I can’t hum. (laughs) But it’s a great song, I can’t wait for it to come out.

MR: This is beautiful. Macy Gray, do you have any words of wisdom for us?

MG: Words of wisdom?

MR: What about anything in the news, is anything catching your eye?

MG: I haven’t watched the news in the last few days, but you know what happened is that there was a situation that happened in the news a little while ago. So much information was wrong that I really got frustrated with the news and haven’t watched since.

MR: What happened?

MG: It was the whole Whitney Houston thing. I just saw a lot of the information that was going around, and so much of it was wrong, from sources that we consider really on target. After I saw that, I’ve just been turned off. I’m a big news-watcher. I love the news and politics, but after that, I’ve just been disenchanted with that whole thing and haven’t watched it for a while.

MR: Yeah, I guess it’s exaggeration in order to get you excited so you stay tuned to the news.

MG: Yeah, it’s crazy. I read quite a bit, but I just haven’t watched the news in a while.

MR: Macy, thank you for all your time, I’d love to do this again in the future, maybe with your next new album.

MG: Anytime.

Transcribed by Narayana Windenberger