Macy Gray | The Sellout (Coming June 22nd, 2010)

Macy Gray
Premieres ‘Beauty In The World’ Music Video on VEVO.com

Check out Macy Gray gettin’
funky with cheerleaders and skater boys in this Adria Petty directed
music video. This is the first single from Macy’s forthcoming album ‘The
Sellout’.

At the start of
2009 and ten years into her career, Macy Gray found herself a free agent
and on the verge of “The Sellout.” Sure, she sold 15 million albums,
scored two Grammy Awards, two MTV awards and with “I Try,” had one of
the most successful singles of all time, but after 2007’s Big, she found
herself alone, with no one to answer to but herself. Big was the
slickest album of her career and she considered going even further away
from the true, gritty, whiskey-voice Macy, following instead of leading.
In other words, selling out.

“I thought after Big flopped
maybe I should do what everyone else was doing,” she says. “Go out and
hire the hottest producers, the best writers, get real skinny. But none
of those people called me back.”

For Gray, it was an
ego-bruising wallop that left her bewildered and irritated at
relationships that turned out to be more fair weather than everlasting.
“I was terrified, I didn’t know what to do,” she says. “You have all
these people telling you how dope you are and then they just go away.”

Chastened, Gray
went back to her comfort zone, toiling in the studio with a select group
of friends and musicians. A studio owner in Tarzana gave her a
dirt-cheap deal on space and for months she went in and pushed herself
to come up with new material. As the new songs took shape, that feeling
of rejection gave way to a steely resolve to reestablish herself as one
of music’s dominant singers. “When I was on my own, I was making songs
that I liked,” she says. “It was my own money, I didn’t have to go play
it for someone. I wasn’t someone’s employee.”

The resulting effort – aptly
titled The Sellout (Concord Records) – is a return to form for Gray,
perhaps her finest album to date, but one that propels her sound forward
rather than looking longingly at the past. Sure, there are classic-Macy
pop-soul stylings in tracks like “Lately,” but she branches out on
tracks like the epic stadium rock-stomper “Kissed It” (featuring a
blistering guitar solo from longtime friend Slash) or the Prince-like
slow funk jam “Stalker” that wouldn’t be out of place on Sign O’ The
Times.

According
to Gray, many of the songs started out with a four-on-the-floor dance
beat, but then, “everyone started doing it and I needed to stay true to
who I am.” That shows up on the album’s first single, the breezy “Beauty
In The World” which started out as a David Guetta-style house track but
switched after Gray turned it into more of a rollicking peace &
love sing-a-long. “You get bombarded with opinion and expectations and
what other people want and you forget what you do well,” she says. “That
song is what I do well.”

Gray also clearly ups her
game in the lyrics department, filling out the portrait of herself as an
artist. Many of her songs have her trademark wit (check out the horny
banter between her and guest Bobby Brown on the steamy “Real Love”) but
others are more agonizing, whether it’s the deeply confessional “On And
On” or the making amends of “Still Hurts.” “I was depressed,” she
admits. “I had been through two or three relationships in that time so
my love life wasn’t going well. Last year was a real bummed out time.”

But leave it to her
three teenage children to put things in perspective. “Beauty” was
inspired by her daughter who one day Macy overheard laughing
hysterically in the next room. “I was having a really bad day and I
heard my daughter just cracking up in the next room,” she recalls. She
has this really great laugh and I didn’t even know what she was laughing
at. I thought ‘at least she’s happy.’ And I felt at least I hadn’t
failed there, because my daughter’s happy.”

Despite the rejection, the
uncertainty and the heartache, The Sellout is a total triumph and
success. It’s a testament to Gray’s resolve and songwriting chops that
the material feels so honest and authentic but yet effortless, moving
seamlessly from one track to the next. There’s nothing forced, nothing
that feels out of place. Fittingly, the album ends with the anthemic
track, “The Comeback,” a bookend declaration of things accomplished and
the hope for better things to come:

“Hey big world it’s me
again/I’m coming way back to be big again.”

“I just poured my heart
out,” she says. “I didn’t set out to have a theme, but when I put them
all together it was a picture of my life in that time. I’m dying for
people to like it.”

It’s the comeback. And The
Sellout. And it proves that Gray has no intention of fading away.

Concord Music Group