How Macy Gray Is Hitting ‘The Reset’ Button With New Album, Tour

The same voice that won Macy Gray a Grammy in 2001 was the singer, songwriter and actress’ biggest sore spot and often ammo for bullies who made her life a living hell as a child.

“It used to be a problem because when I talked, people would laugh at me,” Gray told me via Zoom video. “I was always getting kind of made fun of at school. So I stopped talking, not like mute or anything, but I just wasn’t talking in public.

“I’d be in class and I would know the answer, and I’d be really scared to raise my hand because I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want them to laugh at me after I said the answer. So for a long time, it was like my Achilles heel. … I didn’t really get that I could use it till my 20s.”

Macy slowly began discovering a purpose for her distinctive voice and building confidence in it singing with friends in college.

“I was writing songs with this little crew in college. We’d get together and go in the dorm and make up songs. When you’re in college, you do s*** like that,” Gray said. “So we would just be in the room, write these little songs. And so when you show somebody how the song goes, you have to sing it. You have to say, ‘Oh, it goes like this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’

“So I had all these little tapes of me singing ideas on cassette. And then there was this kid that had a jazz band that played every Sunday. And he heard the tape, and he asked me if I would join his band. And that’s really when I started. But not even thinking that I could sing, it was just that he would pay me $100 every time I played.

“And so I would do it, but I don’t think I really got that I might have something till I started listening to Billy Holiday because I thought it was like you had to be like Whitney Houston or Barbra Streisand or something. You had to have pipes. You know what I mean?

“I didn’t have that. But after I joined his band, he had me listening to all this jazz that I had never listened to before, and I had to learn all these Billy Holiday and Frank Sinatra songs. They had proper voices, but they didn’t have pipes.

“Then I thought, ‘Well, maybe I can actually to do this because I don’t have to sound like Chaka Khan.’ I started kind of working on it, and I really got into it. Even though I thought it was not a real singer voice, I started trying to make it work, style wise and stuff like that.”

Gray’s standout voice was certainly working when she took home the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 2001 for “I Try”.

“You know what? When I got it, I did not think it was a big deal because when I was little, I never really paid much attention to the Grammys,” Macy said. “But I realized it’s like winning an Oscar. It puts you on a different level, I guess. But I didn’t know that at the time.

“It was just cool to do the award show. And it was just cool to be there, tell my mom, like, ‘I’m at Grammys.’

“So I didn’t really get it until later. But now, it’s all [fluff]. Now the Grammys, it’s kind of like, I don’t know… You never really know what’s going on anymore with that show because we all know that there’s a lot of— it’s kind of like a TV show now. They kind of designed it so that you make sure that certain people show up for the TV show so you make sure they get nominated.

“It’s kind of not as cool as it used to be. Not to take away from the people who win it, but I don’t know if it’s as coveted as it used to be.”

Back in the early 2000s when Macy won, the Grammys were legit in the eyes — and ears — of the audience and the industry.

With the success of “I Try”, pressure was mounting on Gray to do it again, and with the same sound.

“I think after that record, I remember my label talking to the producers and telling them all, we want another ‘I Try’. And I think a lot of people who didn’t follow me after that, they think that’s my only song,” Gray said. “People call me a one-hit-wonder, and I’m just like, I sold 33 million albums. I don’t know how you say [I just have] one song. I think it’s an issue for everybody else.

“And I think there was a moment where I got really confused and I didn’t understand because when I wrote that record, I was just being myself. And so that’s what I continued to do. But there’s some of the other songs that I did that didn’t resonate that way, and I didn’t understand that for a long time.

“So I finally settled into just I can only do what I do and I hope everybody likes it. That’s really where I’m at now, just about creating and making the best records that I know how to make.”

Macy’s new album, The Reset, releases on July 8. The pandemic played a role in both naming and making it.

“During COVID, we wrote the album right just when COVID got really deep. I think we went to the studio for the first time in August of 2020, and it was an interesting time because everybody had an opinion,” Gray said. “It was emotional, everybody was mad, everybody was scared. So it was a good time to make a record because you can go in and you can throw all that into whatever you’re creating and it worked because we came up with this crazy record.

“So it was a reset in that there was new inspiration and you had to think differently. Even when we went in the studio, you had to come in and you had to put antibiotic wash on your hands, and you had to check your temperature.

“And everything had plastic all over it. It was so weird. So it was just kind of really symbolic to me that everything had changed and it came out in the album. So that was the good part.”

Currently, Macy is playing Europe in conjunction with “The Reset” tour. She has dates in the US beginning at the City Winery in Washington D.C. June 25 before heading to Philadelphia, New York, and LA this summer as well.

Gray also reminisced about a big acting project that came her way after she hit the mainstream as a singer. Macy received a speaking role in 2001’s Training Day, opposite Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke. Washington won his second Academy Award for “Best Actor” for the film.

“Oh, that was cool because I went to the set [early]; they wanted me to meet Denzel and I went in his trailer and it was so surreal sitting in a trailer with Denzel Washington,” Gray recalled. “We were just sitting there and he was in character. He was on fire. It was in his eyes.

“I remember he was watching a documentary, a Ken Burns documentary about Thelonious Monk. I’ll never forget that. I realized later that was his character. That’s something his character would do because he was totally— he was talking like him. He was kind of edgy. He couldn’t sit still.

“And then he said, ‘You know what? Don’t overthink it. Just be yourself doing what you would do in that character’s position.’ Then I thought, ‘I can’t do that.’

“So I took that and I had my hair style at the time, and I kind of took on her personality. That helped to kind of have somebody to model after. So I kind of took his advice, but I wasn’t being myself. I was being her. And I think it worked out like that.”

Macy dove deeper into character ahead of filming a scene with Hawke, which made for a memorable moment for her.

“So seeing how Denzel really got into character, I went on set, and I was like, ‘I’m going to be totally in character.’ I didn’t even know method acting was a thing, but I was like, ‘I’m just going to be.’ And so me and Ethan, we’re doing a scene, and I started complaining about the way he was acting,” Gray said with a laugh.

“I was like, ‘He’s not giving me enough. I can’t really do what I do with his acting. He’s being too soft.’ I started being her, but complaining about his acting. Whole room just froze. They just looked at me like, ‘Are you crazy?’

“I didn’t know. You don’t tell Ethan Hawke he’s not good for this movie,” Macy said with more embarrassed laughter. “I was just so into my character. That was my first real part. So I didn’t know the rules.

“I don’t think anybody talked to me after that. It just got really quiet. Antione (Fuqua, Training Day director) was like, ‘Okay, just do it again.’”