Macy Gray is an American R&B and soul singer. She is known for her singing style heavily influenced by Billie Holiday.
So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about the singer.
- Her real name is Natalie Renée McIntyre
- She was born on September 6, 1967
- She is known by her stage name Macy Gray
- Macy Gray is an American R&B and soul singer and actress
- She is known for her distinctive raspy voice and a singing style heavily influenced by Billie Holiday
- Macy Gray has released ten studio albums
- She received five Grammy Award nominations, winning one
- She has appeared in a number of films
- Including Training Day, Spider-Man, Scary Movie 3, Lackawanna Blues, Idlewild, For Colored Girls, and The Paperboy
- Gray is best known for her international hit single “I Try”
- The single is from her multi-platinum debut album On How Life Is
- Natalie McIntyre was born in Canton, Ohio
- She is the daughter of Laura McIntyre, a math schoolteacher, and Otis Jones
- Her stepfather was a steelworker, and her sister is a biology teacher
- She has a younger brother, Nate, who owns a gym in West Philadelphia and was featured on the season five finale of Queer Eye
- She began piano lessons at age seven.
- A childhood bicycle mishap resulted in her noticing a mailbox of a man named Macy Gray
- She used the name in stories she wrote and later decided to use it as her stage name
- She was late developing and did not learn to hold conversation until just before her tenth birthday
- Macy Gray attended school with Brian Warner (later known as musician Marilyn Manson) although they did not know each other
- She attended more than one high school, including a boarding school which asked her to leave due to her behavior
- She attended the University of Southern California and studied scriptwriting
- While attending the University of Southern California, she agreed to write songs for a friend
- A demo session was scheduled for the songs to be recorded by another singer, but the vocalist failed to appear
- So Gray recorded them herself
- Macy Gray started forming bands and writing songs just for fun and then she really got into it and got attached to it
- Then a friend of hers asked me to be a singer in his jazz band
- He gave her all these jazz CDs and Macy Gray studied all these different singers and kind of taught herself how to sing for a gig
- She didn’t take it seriously until later
- She then met writer-producer Joe Solo while working as a cashier in Beverly Hills
- Together, they wrote a collection of songs and recorded them in Solo’s studio
- The demo tape gave Gray the opportunity to sing at jazz cafés in Los Angeles
- Although Gray did not consider her unusual voice desirable for singing
- Atlantic Records signed her
- She began recording her debut record but was dropped from the label upon the departure of A&R man Tom Carolan, who had signed her to the label
- Macy returned to Ohio but in 1997 Los Angeles based Zomba Label Group Senior VP A&R man Jeff Blue, convinced her to return to music and signed her to a development deal
- She started recording new songs based on her life experiences, with a new sound, and began shopping her to record labels
- In 1998, she landed a record deal with Epic Records
- She performed on “Love Won’t Wait,” a song on the Black Eyed Peas’ debut album Behind the Front
- Mace Gray was married to Tracy Hinds, a mortgage broker, for about two years
- They divorced prior to her rise to prominence
- hey have three children: Aanisah, Mel, and Happy
- She opened the Macy Gray Music Academy in 2005
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