The album is titled The Reset because Macy, like so many of us, feels like that’s what this awkward, often painful period is like to live through. “God is telling us to rethink the things that we are doing… How we’re livin’. Like Pandora’s Box, a lot of things have sprung out that people had stopped paying attention to. The world is having a reset. Whether it’s a good one or a bad one, we’ll find out. I use to believe everything happens for a reason. Now…I just don’t know.”

Among the most striking of the new songs is “America,” a song like all of Macy’s lyrics, that came to her while she was on the mic, spontaneously inspired by music from her band. “I just remember feeling really let down by my country. I don’t know if I’d ever felt that before… like, walking around telling everybody. ‘I live in the greatest country in the world’ then being hit with the thought, ‘Maybe I don’t.’

Having a president that was really negative and very divisive, and that being o.k. with so many people. Your neighbors revealing where they’re really coming from. I know America has flaws and we have a long way to go. But I don’t remember ever feeling this disappointed. Putting all of that into words didn’t come to me until I was on the mic and my drummer started playing that beat. I started singing then Billy and Alex started working on it. That song was written pretty fast.”

For a cover tune, the band landed on the minefield “Cop Killer,” a controversial heavy metal song remembered from that time when rap star Ice-T decided he wanted to front a band – the Black Rock septet Body Count. Macy was there. That was 1992. Thanks to the need for a Black Lives Matter movement today, it’s still hella relevant 30 years later. “Wildly enough, my first manager had me on the road with Body Count way before I got discovered,” Macy confesses. “He took me on tour with them, so, I heard that song all the time. What everybody misses about that song is that it is beautifully written. Ice (Tracy Marrow) covered so many perspectives regarding people’s relationships with cops. He was so good at exposing the range of emotions beneath the surface. It’s eloquent in the weirdest way. I love our version better simply because I’m not a huge thrash metal fan. I hope ours introduces the lyrics to a wider audience.”

Escapism as a theme shows up in two key songs on The Reset. The moodier one is “Alien” which poses the intergalactic inquiry, “Where can you go where you can just live?” Macy muses, “Sometimes I feel like we all got bamboozled into working our whole lives – struggling past 60 to pay your dues! I just wonder, ‘Was that really the master plan?’ If so, why can’t I just ride off into the sunset without all that?”
For those that don’t have Jeff Bezo bucks for space travel, the next best place to land is at da club – offered up retro style by The California Jet Club via “Disco Song.” Macy brightens, “2 Chainz posted a clip on Instagram of a girl playing classical piano while twerking. It was Jhonni Blaze (from the “Love and Hip Hop” TV show). I reposted it, tagged her and she DM’d me like, ‘Oh, My God, I would love it if we could just meet one day!’ I was so down to meet her, too, so she came to Cali from Atlanta. I had this song ‘Disco’ that I liked the track but thought my lyrics were awful! I asked her, ‘Do you hear
anything for this?’ She totally saved me from sounding like an old person on my own song! Tommy came up with the vamp hook (‘All I need is / A little bit of bump and grind / Do me `til I’m satisfied / F’ around and do a line’). I wrote the verse and chorus.”

Another song with a colorful twist is the second single, “Undone,” a celestial pop-blues ballad of Shirley Bassey proportions penned for Macy by producer Tommy Parker (a.k.a. Thomas Lumpkins) and his niece, Nakiesha Marie Pick. “He had never produced a live band, so it was a situation that we could all learn from,” Macy states. “Tommy’s mainstream vibe (Ariana Grande) mixed with what we do came out really nice. He already had the song tricked out at his house. I went in and did the vocals on my own. I felt like it needed strings but it was too late (11pm) to call in any players. So, I called my friends Maiya Sykes and Whitey to see if they could sound like strings. They did the big opera backgrounds.”

The cherry on top of “Undone” is the video (premiered at trendy Soho House in West Hollywood) starring drag performer Frankie J. Grande. “The video came about by default,” Macy explains. “I was scheduled to be in Australia to do ‘The Masked Singer.’ I had been following Frankie on Instagram. During the pandemic, he was doing this series where he would be in his bathroom, get out of his tub and sing songs. He’d have on makeup and be topless – some very strange theater. I thought, ‘What about Frankie in a bathroom, taking his clothes off (chuckles) and singing?’ The director, Guido, brought the choreography and lighting. And we got this amazing editor I went to USC with – T. David Binns. The edit is incredible and what really makes the video work.”

Prior to the debut of “Thinking of You”, Gray released her tenth full-length album, RUBY [Artistry Music/Mack Avenue], which earmarked yet another creative high point in her career. Channeling the spirit of the “grimy” R&B and smoky jazz music she holds close to her heart, Gray leaped forward by looking back to formative inspirations. However, she updated those elements with enriched and enigmatic soundscapes brought to life by producers Johan Carlsson [Michael Bublé, Maroon 5], Tommy Brown [Jennifer Lopez, Fifth Harmony, Travis Scott], and Tommy Parker Lumpkins [Janet Jackson, Justin Bieber].