Macy Gray
Macy Gray The Sellout (Universal)
In the title of her fifth album, Macy Gray isn't referring to her career but rather to love. However, the listener gets the feeling she's all too aware of her current status on the pop music ladder. At the age of 42 and with her career dangerously close to being roadkill, Gray has decided to make music on her own terms, with wildly mixed results.
She has dispensed with the big Will.i.am-style production that marred her last effort and is showing far more soul than on her 1999 debut, which made her a favourite among the BMW set. 'Shake your booty boys and girls for the beauty in the world,' she sings unabashedly during one of the feel-good R&B songs of the year.
Stabs at disco and a surprisingly great duet with rock act Velvet Revolver further serve as complements to Gray's vocals, which ooze both playfulness and pain in her distinctive rasp.
But a few too many references to being misunderstood ('And maybe if you knew about my history, you wouldn't be such a bitch to me,' she sings at one point), an ill-advised duet with washed-up Bobby Brown, and a batch of generic tracks mar this particular comeback, though Gray manages to hold her head high and give a finger to the industry in the process.
