Sitting under the hot sun on the south coast, sipping an iced coffee in an indie Hove coffee shop, Gretta Ray is shining on the summer, the day after her The Great Escape debut.
That vibe has become the 26-year-old’s mantra over the past 12 months, helping her achieve a stellar two-year record. positive spin On the other side of the world. An hour of sun-soaked synth-pop, the album shows Australians embracing adulthood with endearing levity.
“I’m really proud,” admits Gretta. “It was born from a place of true joy.
“A lot of the songs on the album that I wrote in London in the summer of 2022 were really perfect bubbles of time. I didn’t set out to think of things in terms of campaigns or anything, so creativity was the only thing that drove me. To quote the lyrics, I was really into it.
“It was also summer when we arrived in Australia to record. There was so much brightness in the process of making this record. “I worked hard to create an album that was as complete as possible,” he said.
Ray has been releasing music since 2016, but his popularity in the UK has soared in recent months after supporting Maisie Peters on tour. During their short set, first-time listeners couldn’t help but be entranced by tracks like ‘Heartbreak Baby’ and ‘Don’t Date The Teenager’.
The project came to fruition Monday in Lafayette with 600 fans in front of her. But it has a different feel to the star set at One Church in Brighton.
“The (Thursday) show was really good,” says Gretta. “We had fans, it was a different atmosphere than a headline show, but it was nice to think about the songs differently, as if we were pitching a project, and it was a good creative challenge,” she said.
“Playing in a place like a church is really beautiful because of the acoustics. Now, with my headline shows, I feel like the audience is part of the show that I love, but with smaller things like this, it takes me back to basics and the original world. I like both.”
It’s impossible not to talk more about Ray’s role on last year’s Maisie Peters headline tour. That series of shows received critical acclaim as Peters closed out at Wembley Stadium and became the talk of the music world.
Ray’s support slot was a real winner. A quick survey from Lafayette confirmed that a majority of the audience would first see the star on the road in 2023.
“I think there’s a really beautiful story between Maisie and I.” When Gretta is asked why the set worked so well, she explains: “I think that’s what the fans are interested in. Because we shared it with our fans.
“Whether I did backing vocals on Maisie’s song, or she did vocals on mine, or I was a guest on her first Australian show, there was very little that facilitated that. She is one of my closest friends. We are so honored to be a part of her amazing story as it continues to grow.”
It’s been over a year since I fell positive spin, the composer began to think about his next era and reinvention. She recently debuted ‘January Is Quiet’, a vulnerable song with a hint of the music she is making, on her live show.
“I completely forgot I had never sung this song before I went on stage.” She laughed as she talked about her choice to close her Lafayette set on that track. “When I realized that, I felt more vulnerable,” she said.
“I love that song so much, but playing it on the back of that record was really exciting. Without the experience of last year’s album, ‘January is Quiet’ would not have existed. “I felt like writing alone in Melbourne.”
The thought of new music will likely excite fans who have seen the singer on tour with Maisie Peters, The Great Escape, or even met her in Australia a few years ago. But her patience may be a virtue as she continues to prepare the next dish.
“(‘January is Quiet’) The song says, ‘I’m not sure what’s next,’ and I’m still on that page. What I want to do more of is spend time with myself and my guitar again. Confessional compositions done when alone are different from collaborative compositions.
“What I do know is that I love pop music just as much as I’ve ever done, as much as me and my guitar. I’ve been trying to get pop music right for the last few years, and now we’ve gotten to a place where I feel really comfortable with it, and I want to continue to embrace that.
“I am obsessed with RAYE. I am so inspired by her and validated by how she crosses her five genres in one night. It’s all RAYE. We can get stuck in our heads as artists with genres, but I want to break away from that and do something of our own.”
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