It’s difficult to find a spare moment in Gretta Ray’s schedule to fit an interview in — which is why she is multitasking by having some breakfast while we chat.
It’s no surprise she’s so booked up. At the time of the interview, her new album, Positive Spin, is just about to drop and she’s deep in the press cycle. It seems like every time I tap her Instagram stories these days, she’s either in LA filming a music video, or she’s paying a visit to Spotify’s Sydney offices, or she’s playing an arena in Perth.
On TikTok, she’s tirelessly posting snippets of her new music, speaking enthusiastically about her life and songs to her fans, diligently dressing herself and her surroundings in shades of yellow to recreate the sunny aesthetic of the Positive Spin cover.
Throughout it all, Gretta brings a gentle glow to everything she does. Even during our interview, she sits directly in unseasonable Melbourne sun, bathed in soft light.
Positive Spin is her most self-aware work to date; twelve world-class, infallible pop songs, as technically well-crafted as they are poignant and powerful. Each song is meticulously painted with a clever sense of good, of optimism — and where optimism is tricky or unsuitable, there’s learning, time, empathy and healing. A comforting sense that the best is yet to come.
While Begin To Look Around, Gretta’s first record, was undoubtedly a triumph, Positive Spin hits even harder. There’s more nuance in this record, as she daringly grapples with dark themes, looking back with hindsight on her past, unafraid to interrogate a handful of opposing truths at once.
The title might be Positive Spin, but make no mistake — this is no sugary pop record. It’s an exploration of the hard things, fighting through them, and searching for the good, or the lesson, in it.
Finding The Silver Lining
Image: Gretta Ray / Cybele
Successfully finding the silver lining in any bad situation is a special power — and repeatedly doing so, like Gretta has done on Positive Spin, must be a rare superpower. It requires not just optimism, but intelligence, empathy, and an unshakeable sense of self.
As I listened to the album, I wondered if there was an all-encompassing word for this superpower — something to describe it in full, a name for this attitude we should all aspire towards.
For the first time on record, she is clearly well aware of the unique, optimistic warmth she carries, and the strength it wields. But Gretta actually has explored this strange superpower before, albeit unconsciously.
“I took a deeper look into my discography and recognised that it was in everything,” she tells me.
“I think people say that Radio Silence on my second EP is maybe one of my saddest songs — and the hook is literally ‘I’m putting my money on time’. There’s just always this sense of ‘what if’ and a sense of possibility. I didn’t realise that it was living in everything [that I write].”
“Optimism” alone isn’t quite the right word for Gretta’s unique power, because while it may reflect part of her outlook on the world, it doesn’t do justice to her ability to feel deeply, and to understand hard emotions. It’s impossible to imagine the woman who wrote the scathing single ‘Don’t Date The Teenager’ being a rose-coloured optimist. There’s just so much more to it.
Maybe it’s something of a hard-won and benevolent breed of optimism, something that has no real name. A sage worldly-wisdom that trickles through her every move.
‘Loving Somebody’, a gorgeous album track on Positive Spin made with Gretta’s longtime collaborator Gab Strum (aka Japanese Wallpaper), explores the idea that being able to truly, deeply love another person is special and rare — a precious ability that deserves to be celebrated, with or without a current subject of affection.
“I was feeling kind of quite ashamed about how much I had let people in in my past, and how attached I had gotten to people,” Gretta tells me.
“I was starting to wish that I could feel detached in certain romantic connections and that I didn’t really care about relationships. I wanted so badly to be wired like that. But I’m not, and I never have been.”
“In writing ‘Loving Somebody’, it was me coming to realise that it doesn’t really matter how bad a breakup gets, or how scorned you are from a relationship, I’m still going to want love… It was nice to arrive at the hook [of the song] which says ‘loving somebody made me me,’ which lands on this delightful major chord. It feels very validating.”
Don’t Date The Teenager
On Positive Spin, two tracks in particular delve deep into heavy, complicated territory. ‘Dear Seventeen’ and ‘Don’t Date The Teenager’ explore power dynamics in relationships, specifically, older men who date much younger women.
For Gretta, It’s an experience that hit close to home.
“It’s very surprising how much your perspective on certain scenarios can change when you just age and allow that time to reflect,” she tells me.
And with Taylor Swift’s unforgettable short film for ‘All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version)’, Gretta watched her lifelong hero help a generation of young women put words to what can often feel like an unspeakable thing.
“The internet kind of had this collective meltdown in a really interesting way,” she says .
“I watched with such curiosity for days, and I felt, obviously, very seen. It was alarming watching that film. I just saw so much of my life, and it was bizarre that it was [coming] from someone I’ve admired my whole life. [Taylor] was being so, so vulnerable. She said these lyrics I could never have imagined her writing.”
“Seeing how many people said ‘Oh, I find this so relatable,’ I was like, what are you talking about? Does this happen to a lot of people? Well, this sucks, it’s happening to so many women. I think it’s all the more important to tell my version of this because if that can have even the slightest of a similar effect on someone else, then that’s a good thing.”
Gretta’s ‘positive spin’ approach to the world has given her a unique and impressive career so far, beginning when she was a teenager in high school. She seems to have had an unerring radar for goodness within the notoriously shady music industry from the very beginning.
“I think [my attitude] has probably drawn me to the right people,” she says. “I have been lucky enough to work with so many people that also hold a similar sense of optimism when it comes to putting out music, and remembering the important things about it — how much you love the art, and how much you love taking the time to get it right and make it perfect.”
Defining A Superpower
I really should know by now how to properly define Gretta’s powers. In writing this profile, and in knowing her around the industry for several years, I have spent a lot of time marvelling over her remarkable and layered sense of self.
A few years ago I think I might’ve unfairly attributed it to her youth, wondering if her unshakeable glow was due to that inherent confidence that Gen Z always seems to possess.
I’ve since learned that she is not really the product of a generation, but more a total anomaly. Just like her talent, her positive but sage attitude is completely singular, which perhaps makes it inherently indefinable.
Maybe I’m trying too hard to find one easy name for Gretta’s combined sense of optimism, wisdom, intuition and empathy. None of those words alone or together seem to quite encompass everything about her golden attitude towards the world. Something vital always seems to get left out.
The answer comes to me suddenly when we are wrapping up our interview. I am already hovering over the ‘end meeting’ button when Gretta leans towards her laptop camera and asks me emphatically, “But how are you? How are you?”
That was when I began to wonder if Gretta’s ability to see the good in everything and everyone, while still acknowledging hard, complicated things, stems from something very, very simple: her kindness.
Gretta Ray’s new album ‘Positive Spin’ is out now.
Eilish Gilligan is a Melbourne-based musician and writer. You can reach her pretty much anywhere at @eilishgilligan.
Image: Cybele