Macy Gray tried — and failed — to get the hottest producers to work on her new album. But she says getting dissed by today’s hitmakers actually made her CD better.
Associated Press reports:
“My album would probably be real wack or something,” she said, laughing.
After her last album, 2007’s “Big,” made a small impression and flopped, the singer wanted to work with trendy producers in hopes of duplicating the triple-platinum success she achieved with her 1999 debut.
“Oh, you name it, like, whoever was hot,” Gray answered when asked who she had called, though she wouldn’t be specific.
She said she reached out to those producers because “I thought, you know, maybe I don’t know what I’m doing … I started doubting myself.”
When her calls went unreturned, Gray co-wrote each of the album’s tracks while collaborating with producers Jared Lee Gosselin, Phillip White and Chase N. Cashe, among others.
Then she decided to call the disc “The Sellout.”
“Once you become, like successful, then all these people come in with all their opinions, telling you what you should do and what’s cool and what’s not, and who you should work with. And then suddenly your art isn’t just yours anymore,” Gray said.
“A lot of that can affect you as a person and as an artist, and so it’s just about how I had to keep my head above all that,” she continued.
The 42-year-old singer, who won a Grammy Award in 2000 for her debut song, the raspy pop tune “I Try,” says she’s learned that the record industry is completely ageist.
