In Conversation With GRAE
Photo by Gennelle Cruz
Since 2019, Toronto-based alt-pop artist GRAE has been taking on the world by storm. With 15 million streams to her name, recognition from Billboard, Spotify, and Apple Music, and features in shows like Nancy Drew and The Bold Type, she’s making waves with her intoxicating and sensual, yet soft and tender sound. While she’s always written from personal experience, her brand-new single “Room in the Desert” off her forthcoming album Whiplash (releasing this April!) presents a new side to GRAE and her willingness to experiment with ambiguity, nonsensical lyricism, and the unknown.
We caught up over Zoom to chat about the song, how her influences have evolved and changed over time, and how she’s similarly grown as an artist since she first began writing songs at age 10.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Growing up, you discovered music as a way to bond with your father. Can you speak more about the specific music you listened to?
[GRAE]: My dad definitely helped shape all of my music tastes. When I was growing up, the albums that I remember so vividly were Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation, Corrine Bailey Rae’s self-titled album, Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Supertramp, Elton John. I could go on forever.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How do you find those artists have influenced your current sound?
[GRAE]: I always say that when I was little, I would walk around the house and sing Norah Jones and Corrine Bailey Rae songs. I don’t credit them enough but they helped shape the tone of my voice because I tried to mimic how they sounded. I think that’s where I got my airy, textured voice from.
[UNPUBLISHED]: As a current musician yourself now, who would you name as influences?
[GRAE]: The music that I’m creating now is more inspired by what I’m currently listening to as an adult, more than what I listened to growing up. I have an absolute love for 80s music, like 80s new wave is always going to be part of the music that I’m making but I only really got into The Cure when I was seventeen. And I only got into Tame Impala three years ago. They both really inspire me and there’s a lot in between that.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How do you incorporate what they’ve taught you into your music?
[GRAE]: What I love about these artists is their ability to be so effortlessly themselves, like Prince, Robert Smith, Tame Impala, Kevin Parker. I take a lot of inspiration from them to be myself, do what I like, create what I like because it’s easy to get caught up in what other people want. I listen to new wave and The Cure so I’ll take that into sessions sometimes and say, “I love how this sounds.” And then we’ll take inspiration from that type of music.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What do you love about music?
[GRAE]: It’s cliché but I love making music as a form of self-expression and being able to release your inner emotions. If anything is going on in my life that is emotionally draining like a break-up, the first thing I do is come home and write. It’s almost easier to do that than it is to talk about it. It’s a personal and intimate self-therapy because you’re just with yourself.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How did you come up with your stage name and how does it fit into your overall identity as an artist?
[GRAE]: Before I made music as GRAE, I went by my real name Emily Grace. At the time, I was wearing these cute hats with my acoustic guitar because I was trying to be a folk singer-songwriter. But when I created my first EP, I was like, “This is very R&B and Emily Grace doesn’t sound right for this.” So I was in my kitchen with my dad and his friend trying to think of a name. I was like, “There’s so many people named Emily, I don’t want to be Emily anymore!” I was very angry about it for some reason. Then my dad’s friend wrote on a piece of paper “GRAE”, passed it to me, and was like, “You look like a GRAE but spelled like this.” I kept it in the back of my head for three years until I made my EP at nineteen, twenty and was like, “I think I should change my name to GRAE.” And my producer was like, “Honestly, GRAE’s cool, it fits this sound.” A lot of people think it stems from my middle name “Grace” but it has nothing to do with that. It was just my dad’s friend randomly saying it one day and it stuck.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Let’s turn now to your brand new single “Room in the Desert”! In the press release, you mentioned how you “decided to write a song about nothing, from nothing, using some random and interesting words we could find.” How did that compare or differ from your usual music creation process?
[GRAE]: This song is completely different from any song I’ve ever written. I just went into this session like, “I have nothing to write about. I have no inspiration.” I was ready to leave because in the midst of everything that was happening, I hadn’t experienced life. I was locked inside along with everyone else. It was uninspiring. But there’s an 80s band called the Cocteau Twins and they have a song called “Cherry-coloured Funk” and the lyrics make absolutely no sense. It sounds like they opened a dictionary, put their finger in it with their eyes closed, and chose a word. So I remember saying to my producer, “Let’s make a Tame Impala-inspired track production wise and write something from nothing.”
[UNPUBLISHED]: What did you love about that different kind of approach?
[GRAE]: The song meant absolutely nothing to me and that creative freedom was so fun. Typically, I write from personal experience so I allowed myself to create this really weird world and express myself in a way I never have before. Now it means something to me after I’ve written it, performed it a couple times, listened to it. But in the moment, it meant nothing so it differentiates itself from other writing experiences that I’ve had. To this day, it’s the only one I’ve done like that.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Would you be able to share what the song now means to you?
[GRAE]: To me, “Room in the Desert” as a whole is a form of self-expression because I talk about how I cry a lot. It’s about allowing yourself to be free and flow in your emotions, and I’m taking a poke at it. But at the end of the day, I don’t know if it really means that to me. It’s just such a weird thing that I have no relation to and have now found a kind of meaning in it but I want everyone else to find their own meaning in it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How did you work with your producers to create and foster the song’s unique sound?
[GRAE]: My producers are absolutely brilliant. I worked with Connor Seidel and Derek Hoffman on the album and they both just get me. They know what a great sound sounds like and that’s helped the process of the album so much because everything sonically fits together. On this track, I worked with Connor and sometimes I’ll come in and say, “This is the vibe I’m feeling,” and in five minutes, this dude just has something. I don’t know how he does it. He nails it every time.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What do you love about working with other creative people in this industry?
[GRAE]: I used to shy away from the collaborative process, like, “I’m not an artist if I can’t write myself.” But now that I collaborate with people and have my writing partner Willa, who has written with me since my EP Permanent Maniac, it’s so fun. For sessions, it’s usually me, Willa, and my producer over Zoom and it helps to bounce ideas. It gets you to another level that you may not have been able to get to on your own and I’ve learned so much while working with these people. I’m surrounded by so many creative individuals who really are excited and on board with everything and want to understand where you’re coming from. It helps me as a writer, an artist, and a musician.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Speaking of collaborations, you also filmed an accompanying music video that was directed by Gemma Warren. What did you love about working with her? How do you feel she captured your initial vision for the song?
[GRAE]: Gemma is amazing, I love her so much. I had a Zoom chat with her the first time I ever met her. She was in LA at the time and I remember telling her about the music, what it was about, and she just got it. She sent the treatment over after that initial Zoom and my manager Lori and I were like, “She nailed it!” The only thing I told Gemma was that I wanted a snake and a tarantula, and she made sure I got it. Everything else was her brilliance. It was amazing to collaborate with someone who listened to the song and was like, “I see something. I want to execute it. It’s gonna be dope. Put your trust in me.” So I trusted her and it turned into something great.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Moving forward, your debut album Whiplash is releasing this April - huge congratulations! What was it like to create the album entirely over Zoom? Have you been able to go to an in-person studio at all?
[GRAE]: I’ve only been to an in-person studio twice in two years since COVID. But during the time I was writing this album in the fall and winter during lockdown, it was very frustrating getting into it. After a while, you’re like, “This is awesome! I have a session at 9 but could get up at 8:45 and make it on time.” I got to record my vocals in my own room and that actually allowed me to sing so much better and do way more interesting things because I was alone and wasn’t embarrassed. So for the past year, my producers have been saying that vocally I’ve gotten a lot better because I’ve been doing things outside of my comfort zone.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What tracks are you most excited for fans to hear and why?
[GRAE]: “Boxes” is my favorite off of the album. “Room in the Desert” obviously because it’s very different. There’s a song that’s called “Don’t Know How to Girlfriend” and it’s very intimate, stripped back, acoustic and I adore that song. Everything on it is exciting for me and I just want everyone to hear it all.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You briefly talked about the meaning behind the name Whiplash, how the album “is so back and forth in emotion, but so am I.” Would you be able to speak a bit more about how the album name came about?
[GRAE]: I’m a very up and down person and I suffer from nostalgia, so I romanticize people and relationships when they shouldn’t be. Right when you think I’m falling in love, I’m like, “I wanna forget you” and can’t put my finger on what I want from this person. So my manager listened to the album and she texted me, “This is so back and forth because one song’s ‘I love you’, then ‘I miss you’, ‘I hate you,’ ‘I wanna get back together.’ This is giving me whiplash. That’d be a great album title!” There was a lightbulb and that’s how it came to be.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How would you say this album differs from or is similar to your Permanent Maniac EP, which you released in 2020?
[GRAE]: Permanent Maniac was a self-discovery period for me. It was me trying to figure out what I wanted from myself as an artist genre-wise. I had no idea what I was doing or what I wanted to sound like or what influences to pull from so it’s all over the place in terms of music style. I was very confused. Honestly, it was a dark period for me because I was like, “I don’t know what I want. Should I do music? Is this for me?” Then I wrote “Permanent Maniac” the song and was like, “This is everything I want in a song. This production is so cool because it’s inspired by The Cure. This is what I want to do.” Whereas Whiplash is like, “Let’s take Tame Impala, The Cure, GRAE, and try to create something from that.” I was on board with who my influences were and what sound I wanted. Because with my first EP New Girl, it was my producer and his influences. It didn’t stem from me. Now, my producers are always like, “What do you want, GRAE?” It’s always what I want.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Previously, your music has been heard in shows like Nancy Drew, The Bold Type, and Virgin River. How did it feel to hear your music featured?
[GRAE]: When it first started, my family was so hyped for me and it was such a cool experience for my music to be on Nancy Drew or the Oprah Winfrey Network. It gives you this sense of validation, like your music did something and is on this show that so many people watch. From that, people hear the song and find me so it’s exciting when that happens. It’s surreal.
