Macy Gray Honoring a Music Legend with a Cover of a Classic Album
ISSUE #24 MMUSICMAG.COM Q&A Giuliano Bekor
macy gray Honoring a music legend with a cover of a classic album
Macy Gray was on a Mission to Were you nervous taking on such a got back, and he asked me to be on it. honor her personal hero, stevie wonder, legendary album? then i started my record about a month by covering his iconic album Talking Book. i was mainly nervous about how stevie would later and i asked him to produce it. we the new record—which coincides with the feel. He called me and said he’d heard the got along so well. i loved his old records, 40th anniversary of the original’s release— album and was really flattered by it. For me, and he knows everything there is to features Gray interpreting classics from it was a labor of love, something i wanted to know about music. He’s just really cool “you are the sunshine of My Life” to do in his honor. i just get tired that he doesn’t to be around. He produced some stuff on “superstition.” But don’t call it a tribute get honored more. my next album, too. record. “it’s a love letter and a big thank you,” says the Grammy winner. “stevie practically could that be because r&B has What can you share about the direction created pop music, and i don’t think we changed so much? of your next album? do enough for him.” Produced by veteran r&B is completely different—it’s not even in it’s all original, no covers. the whole time we Hal willner, the album capped a busy year the same room anymore. He did all his stuff were doing those covers we were writing, so for Gray, who also acted in the film The live. it’s a different sound. and the things i have quite a bit of songs. i’m trying to put Paperboy and released the album Covered. he wrote about i don’t hear a lot in r&B. together the right album where everything radio gravitates toward sex and smoking goes together. we were really looking for a Why choose Talking Book? weed, because hip-hop has really taken over. sound that stuck out, something nobody was it’s one of my all-time favorite records. i knew i don’t know when it changed so that you can doing at the moment—and i think we found it really, really well and felt i could sing it from only talk about one or two things, but stevie it. it’s very raw. Most of my albums have the heart. that album also had “Big Brother” wrote about everything from black history to like 50 gazillion tracks on them. we could on it, which is so relevant to today. i also true love to Big Brother. we definitely don’t have done this entire album on an eight- found out it came out in 1972, so being the have an artist out there like that. track tape recorder. it’s all live instruments. 40th anniversary, it all made sense. My label i didn’t want to do what everybody else is wanted me to do Blue by Joni Mitchell, but How did you meet Hal Willner? doing. But that’s not the only reason; i also i just couldn’t do it. Joni’s songs were really He invited me to sing “God Bless the child” definitely wanted to take a step up from what specific to where she was coming from, at an event for the 30th anniversary of i usually do. i wanted to step out of what the way she grew up, and who she was. the Polish solidarity Movement. we just hit comes easy to me. it just wasn’t me. it off. He did a record as soon as we –Amanda Farah
‘For me, the album was a labor of love, something I wanted to do in Stevie’s honor.’
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