33 Things You Should Know About Macy Gray
Where did the delightfully oddball Grammy winner write her classic “I Try”?
What’s the one thing she won’t do in bed?
And whose photo does she keep by her bath?
Macy Gray tells all to Blender — and then some.

By David Keeps

1. Macy Gray made her debut on August 6, 1969.
Her first memory was a musical one and typified her life to come:
“Me and my mom lived in the projects.
I was sitting on a floor, and she had ‘Everyday People,’
by Sly and the Family Stone, playing on the radio.
She was on the phone and she had this sheer gown on,
the radio was blasting, and I could see all her body parts.
My mother likes to walk around naked.”

2. Born out of wedlock, she was christened Natalie.
Her mother, a math teacher, never married her daughter’s biological father.
When Mom married Gray’s stepfather,
a former steelworker named Richard McIntyre,
7-year-old Natalie took her father’s last name.

3. The former Natalie McIntyre took her stage moniker
from a Canton, Ohio, neighbor.
Riding her bike as a kid,
she would see the name Macy Gray on a local man’s mailbox.
When she got to Hollywood in her late teens,
she jacked the name as her own.

4. For a brief time in her career, she wasn’t even Macy Gray.
She recorded an unreleased album for Atlantic Records
in the mid-’90s and was dropped from the label.
When her managers finally convinced her to give the music biz another shot,
they sent out her new demo tape under the name Mushroom.
“I want to do more records under different aliases,” she says,
mentioning “Mite B.” as one possible handle.

5. Gray’s official debut, On How Life Is,
was released just before her thirtieth birthday.
Inspiration came in unlikely places:
She wrote the words to “I Try”
in the bathroom of the health-insurance company where she worked;
she wrote “A Moment to Myself” while on an acid trip
in Old Town Pasadena, California.
On How Life Is went on to sell more than 3 million copies
and won Gray a Grammy Award for Best Female Vocal Performance.

6. It is generally assumed that Gray’s loopy demeanor
at various awards shows is drug-induced.
“I don’t remember,” she says.
“I mean, it’s not like I’d say,
‘Oh, I’ve got to smoke some weed before I go out on the Grammys.’
Not necessarily, I mean.”
She does remember blazing up the night
she went to the launch party for Madonna’s Music
with George Clinton last year.
They arrived in a horse and carriage.
And they definitely inhaled.

7. At a family reunion when Gray was 11,
two older cousins tried to show her how to smoke reefer.
The first doobie gave her only
“a mad contact high.
I didn’t really start smoking weed the right way until after college.
I was a real late bloomer.”

8. Gray’s crackling new CD, The Id, has a song
called “Relating to a Psychopath” that includes the line
“I try to walk away/I choke and I stumble.”
Sound familiar?
“I’m quoting myself!”
Gray cheerfully admits
(the chorus from her first hit, “I Try,” goes
“I try to say goodbye and I choke/Try to walk away and I stumble”).

9. “Oblivion,” another song on the new LP,
is not, as one might assume, about being self-destructive.
“It’s important to have an escape,” Gray explains.
“I think you’d be miserable if you always had to get with the real world
and didn’t have a place to go in your head,
didn’t daydream or didn’t do drugs.”

10. “Weed and birth-control pills are my regulars.”
She won’t try crack or smack, though.
“I’m scared of that shit and I don’t like needles.
I’ve seen people who do it and they’ve got real bad acne.
I’m too vain for that.”

11. Growing up was hard to do.
“I was real skinny,” she recalls,
“and I used to have all these awful growing spurts.
I’d go to bed, and I’d wake up and all my clothes would be too little.”