Not About To Revive Her '90s Sound

"I’ve come a long way since my first album as a songwriter, as an artist.

"I know more than I did back then. So, it’s only natural that my album is gonna come out differently and hopefully way better,” says Natalie McIntyre, better known as Macy Gray, of most recent album The Way. In a soothing voice crinkled only by the occasional raspy giggle, she adds: “Definitely, my vocal cords are on fire!”

In 1999, McIntyre’s raspy vocals gave her an instantly-recognisable singing voice made famous that year by I Try and its attendant album, On How Life Is. McIntyre has since pushed 25 million record sales worldwide. By 2014, she had become a singer, songwriter, actress and single mother of three, and intended her new album to be more reflective of that. “This album is very personal to me,” says McIntyre on the album’s press release. “I want my fans to understand the place where I’m at in life.”

“I think it’s a good album and also a little bit ahead of its time. But as a musician and from what I expect from myself, I’m really happy with this album,” she explains.

“I want my fans to understand the place where I’m at in life.”

However, this being her eighth LP, critics have heralded The Way as a return to 1999. “Yeah, I don’t agree with that. It’s definitely not a return to my first album, ‘cause I did that a loong time ago. I’m not making an album cut from the same idea as the first.”

On How Life Is dropped during a time when the leading ladies of R&B were heavily fusing their production with hip hop beats. Gray credits her producer with making the point of difference to R&B. “It was really the concept of the producer, Andy Slater. But because I’m black, everybody wanted to bill me as an R&B artist. You know, it’s definitely a jump-off-a-cliff move to try to do rock‘n’roll as a black artist or anything away from R&B, rap and soul. So, my producer, who wasn’t a really big fan of the current R&B sound at the time, had a new concept, to make the same sounds with live instruments like they used back in the day. We had a grand piano and real drums! We had a huge, full-on, like the biggest percussion set I’ve ever seen. My friends were like, ‘Why doesn’t he just do that on a drum machine?’ But he was right, when it came out everybody reacted to that because I think I was really, really fresh at the time. It really was the idea to use the same music but recreate it using live instruments and it added to the excitement, live as well.”

McIntyre brings the new album to Australian stages in March and is looking forward to cuddling a koala and all that. “We want to do all the cornball tourist stuff. See a kangaroo,” giggles McIntyre. “But, I am excited because we’re going to go to places we haven’t been before and I really want to be a tourist this time around.”