Macy Gray

Everything you love about Gray -- off-kilter lyrics, '70s soul influence, her wish-you-had-it voice -- returns on her third LP. The funky "When I See You" is the natural place to start, but also check out the soulful ballad, "She Ain't Right For You," and the hilariously introspective "She Don't Write Songs About You."

It's one of R&B's great mysteries: How does a thin, pinched meow of a voice like Macy Gray's
manage to sound gutsier and more convincing than an entire roomful of her more vocally
gifted neosoul sisters? The answer is in one of the few tricks Gray shares with Thom Yorke:
It's not necessarily the words that hook 'em; it's often what you don't say and how you
don't say it. So, bending and stretching her phrases to the edge of their breakin... More >

I know she's supposed to be an eccentric hipster--helps explain that grit-on-velvet voice, which seems so very outré with female pop options cut back to girlish simplicity and operatic aspiration. But except on the magnificent "I Committed Murder"--revisited here in a jokey variation that doesn't wash--her songwriting hasn't been up to the role. Now, done with that id sh*t, she finds her voice by pleading with her man to stay or come back as the case may be. Her big argument: "She Don't Write Songs About You." She's pretty, she's rich, she cooks, she reads, she keeps house, she gives good head. Macy will grant all that. But she don't write songs. (Grade - B+)