Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Gracie Ray has released her first single “Home To Me” from her forthcoming EP, Nighthawk, due out this summer via BMG. Listen to the song now below.
“I wanted to make a melancholy track you can still dance to,” Ray reveals. “I’m heartbroken and betrayed, but It still feels like home because that’s what I got used to. The catch-22 of codependency.”
“My music is conversational,” Ray continues. “Lyrically, I find a lot of truth and beauty in not sugarcoating where I’m at mentally or emotionally. I try to transmute my pain into love.”
Gracie was literally born into music. Her grandfather just so happens to be two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame® inductee David Crosby of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Surrounded by instruments and equipment at home, Gracie picked up a microphone at eight-years-old and learned songwriting by watching her father James Raymond, an accomplished musician himself, and grandfather. She learned piano and guitar before immersing herself in musical theater during high school.
After a year at DePaul University, Gracie transferred to the New School in New York City, studying film and gender studies. At the same time, she often backed Chloe Chaidez of Kitten live in addition to performing solo around the city. Upon graduating, she returned to the West Coast daydreaming of music, listening to everyone from SZA, Jacob Collier, Frank Ocean, and Remi Wolf to Sade, Dolly Parton, and Kacey Musgraves.
In the end, Gracie’s truth will undoubtedly connect from within. “When you listen to me, I hope you walk away a little less isolated and a little more mobilized to heal together and listen to one another,” she leaves off. “We, as a collective, can transmute what we’re going through into art. So, check in on yourself. Recognize your own truths and embrace the song within you. I’ve been sitting with my mission. Now, I know what I was put here to do. I’m finally tapping into it.”