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Macy Gray on kissing women and house parties with Diana Nyad

Macy Gray’s new video for “Bang, Bang” dropped this week with the singer playing a house party that gets a little wild.

“The concept was, originally, just to be a crazy house party,” Macy said. “We’ve all been to wild house parties so we have a house party and I was performing and people dancing, playing poker, people being murdered.” She laughed. “Typical.”

One of those poker players is out athlete Diana Nyad who dons a suit and sits at the card table. Macy said she’d met Diana before, through friends of her daughter, but was thrilled to have her on set.

“Diana actually is a big hero of mine,” Macy said. “I saw the whole movie about her and I knew a lot about her. She’s a really good friend of the director’s so we got lucky. He just called her up and she agreed to be in it, which was awesome and so she came over and she was here all night like everybody else. She was so cool.”

At the end of “Bang, Bang!” Macy is flirting with and kissing another female partygoer, who is a friend of hers in real life.

“That was the director’s idea,” Macy said. “But you know she’s fun, she’s a friend of mine. She’s a model, so I’d have kissed her either way, you know? Boy, girl – whatever!”

Macy has been an LGBT ally throughout her career and has played several gay venues and events.

“I just found that mostly in particular, gay audiences really know how to go a show,” Macy said. “They really know how to party and you know, I don’t know if your sexual preference decides what kind of music you like, but I just know it’s always supercharged like when we just did a couple of Pridefests this last summer. So I’m excited about that, you know, and I think you know there’s this desire to party and hear great music and great art and that’s the gay and lesbian community, you know?”

Macy’s new album The Way comes out October 7, and it’s her first original music in several years. Her last two efforts have been cover albums, and Macy said she was searching for what she wanted to say before she released her own work again.

“It’s all very personal. It’s all pretty narcissistic but there are a couple songs where I”m talking about the world, not particularly myself, but my perspective on things and stuff like that,” Macy said. “But a lot of it’s about relationships of course and there’s all kind of stuff on that record. I don’t know what people will think. I’m really excited and nervous at the same time to find out.”

The Way, Macy said, is “super raw and raunchy but it’s also very melodic and orchestrated and it’s got this mixture of a few different kinds of music. There’s rock ‘n roll and soul and hip-hop in it and whatever else you hear in it.”

The name of the album is inspired by the American Dream.

“It’s really about something we all can relate to: When you go through life and you’re just trying to figure things out, you’re trying to get to that thing called happiness, satisfaction, true love and being a billionaire and all those things people say are so great,” Macy said. “You do your best to get there and 99.9 percent of everybody doesn’t get everything you want but the journey can be so much fun, you know? Even if you never get there but you have a ball on the way. That’s really what it’s all about.”

Macy begins touring with the new music from The Way in September and has three new films in the works, including November Rule from producer Queen Latifah. At 44 and having been in the industry for 15 years now, Macy said she’s heard many rumors about herself throughout her career, but she wouldn’t want to clear them up at this point.

“[There have been] several things but I wouldn’t want to correct anybody,” she said. “You ruin all the mystery.”

Pre-order The Way and find out more about Macy Gray’s upcoming tour dates at macygray.com.

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