Stripped Macy Gray

• 1 Annabelle 05:11
• 2 Sweet Baby 05:05
• 3 I Try 04:17
• 4 Slowly 05:17
• 5 She Ain't Right For You 04:57
• 6 First Time 04:11
• 7 Nothing Else Matters 06:41
• 8 Redemption Song 03:24
• 9 The Heart 05:45
• 10 Lucy 06:49
• Total Runtime 51:37

Info for Stripped

"Stripped" is the ninth studio album recorded by American singer-songwriter Macy Gray. It was released on September 9, 2016 on Chesky Records label. Although Gray's vocals had often been compared to jazz vocalists, Stripped is her first overtly jazz album and features live-in-the-studio recording techniques and accompaniment by leading jazz instrumentalists. The album debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart.

Macy Gray has an unmistakably smoky voice. Striking is her independent and variable vocals: sometimes she caresses the ear with gentle melodies to sound scratchy the next moment.

With her grandiose debut album On How Life Is, she laid an absolutely dreamy career start in 1999. The critics literally turned over with enthusiasm. The album captured the charts worldwide, has been awarded gold and platinum in many countries. That same year, she performed at the SWR 3 New Pop Festival. For her hit I Try she received a Grammy in 2001.

On her new, jazz-influenced album Stripped, she is now making her debut on Chesky Records. Through the special recording technique of the Chesky brothers, her voice gets the space and freedom she needs to truly shine. With new songs, fascinating cover versions, and stunning new arrangements of her hits like I Try, she offers everyone something on this timeless recording.

The recording is part of the Chesky Binaural+ series, all recorded with a single microphone. All of these recordings capture even more spatial realism and take you one step closer to the actual event. You will hear one of the most natural and purest music recordings.

"Recorded for Chesky as part of the label's Binaural+ series, this session, Macy Gray's ninth proper studio album, was caught by a single microphone in a Brooklyn church. Backed by a quartet featuring trumpeter Wallace Roney, drummer Ari Hoenig, bassist Daryl Johns, and guitarist Russell Malone, it's a natural direction for Gray, as she started in jazz bands, putting her unique spin on classics, and has cited jazz vocalists as influences throughout her career. Apart from two originals and as many covers, Gray revisits her own work. "I Try" and "Slowly" are transformed into quiet rumbles, while "Sweet Baby" gets a Bo Diddley beat makeover. She even goes back to Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters," guided by Johns' bass, which alternates between a stutter and a strut. Bob Marley's "Redemption Song," which Gray has been performing since Hurricane Katrina (if not earlier), gets a solemn, lullaby-like reading. The finishing touch, the lone song Gray and the band wrote together, is a lovely ballad that showcases Roney and, well, the singer's suggestive wordplay. All of this is best heard in a late-night setting. The volume of Gray's rasping voice rarely breaks above the level of an intimate conversation -- at times, she sounds a bit off in the distance -- and the group plays as if it's trying not to disturb a dozing parishioner. For all its emphasis on the past, Stripped sounds like a step forward." (Andy Kellman, AMG)

Macy Gray, vocals
Russell Malone, guitar
Wallace Roney, trumpet
Daryl Johns, bass
Ari Hoenig, drums

Macy Gray
is a multi-award-winning American musician, songwriter, producer and actress. She has drawn comparisons to some of the world's most celebrated; including Billie Holliday and Janis Joplin. She is most renowned for her own approach to sound, lyrics and fashion.

Born Natalie McIntyre in Canton, Ohio, on September 6, 1969, Macy remembers very vividly, being bullied in her school years - remarkably for her voice. "I had this super high pitched voice, and everytime I spoke, someone would laugh and mock me. So I stopped speaking in public. I was so afraid of the rejection and humiliation. It made me quiet, which was really devastating, because I had so much I wanted to say. It forced me to find other ways of expressing myself - not consciously, it just went that way. I started making up songs...they would just pop in my head. As miserable as I was at school, I understand now that everything happened just the way it was supposed to. Had I been accepted and popular in high school, I don't think I would have ever turned to music."

Despite her difficulties growing up, Macy was a gifted student who began Classical Piano Study at age 7 After being told by her mother that her only ticket out was college, Macy made a point to ace her high school education. After graduating high school in 1987, she got acceptance letters from The USA Naval Acadamy, USC Film School and Standford Creative Writing. Macy chose USC FIlm School and moved to Los Angeles.

While at film school, Macy met a young music major. Charmed at first sight, she told him she was a passionate musician who wrote lyrics. Macy was neither of those things at the time, but it worked! She was invited to his dorm room to write and record music on his 4-track. "We started making songs after class and on weekends, and it just grew on me. I had to be around music all the time. It wasn't so much that I loved it, I got to the point where I couldn't do without it."

Macy's first live performance was at a downtown Los Angeles hotel singing jazz standards for Sunday brunch. "I'm singing my heart out, and everybody's at the buffet or the bar, talking way louder than I could sing. No one was paying attention to me, but that was ok because I didn't have much confidence in my voice at the time." After graduation, Macy opened her own night spot in Hollywood, called: THE WE OURS, a small cafe that featured open mic on the weekends.

Over the next few years, Macy would work several jobs, most notably as a production assistant at MTV and VH1. In her spare time, she was recording whenever she could, making "demo tapes," mailing them to record labels, playing clubs on the Sunset Strip. In 1994, Atlantic Records A&R, Tom Carolan, happened to catch her performing at the Roxy. He signed the 25 year old, and Macy recorded her first album: "Thing of Beauty."

That same year, Macy found out she was expecting. Upon Atlantic hearing the news, Macy was dropped from the label and "Thing of Beauty" was never released.

By 1997, Macy was married with three kids, living in North Hollywaood. With so much new responsibility, her dreams of stardom seemed far away. When she separated from her husband and moved back to Ohio to live with her mom, she had no idea that her demo had landed on the ears of Jeff Blue, an executive at Zomba publishing.

Miraculously, Jeff got a hold of Macy's Ohio phone number and called. He expressed that he was particularly excited about a song on the tape called: "I Try." Jeff shopped the tape to label execs and in the winter of '98, Macy was invited to meet the President of Epic Records, the late Ms. Polly Anthony. The label released "Macy Gray on How Life is" on July 1, 1999. It is 5 time grammy nominated and sold over 9 million copies.

Starting July 1, 2024 we will begin the year long celebration of the 25th birthday of "On How Life Is" in Australia; and continue through 2025 in Europe, South America, Asia and the United States.

This album contains no booklet.