Step into the Layered World of Saya Gray

Raised by a classical piano teacher and a jazz trumpeter, Gray was born into a musical wilderness. She spent her youth living in her mother’s music school, quickly becoming a virtuoso of many instruments—starting with piano and bass. Imbued with the values of a classically-trained musician, Gray was an independent and disciplined child—traits she is grateful for now, though they once set her apart from her peers. Her music is a byproduct of this upbringing, which also instilled in her a genre-spanning reverence: from Dragonforce to Ray Charles to Chopin. She was taught not to categorize, but to absorb.

Her latest self-titled release, SAYA, is a raw chronicle of heartbreak and hardship—a continuation of her commitment to authenticity in an industry that increasingly applauds conformity. Like Gray's other critically-acclaimed projects—19 Masters (2022), Qwerty (2023), and Qwerty II (2024)—SAYA celebrates artistry that thrives beyond the mainstream while honoring those who turn to art not for leisure, but out of necessity.

Sophie Abeles:  I’m counting the cats.

Saya Gray: There he is. Yeti! I look like I just woke up. I’ve been staying up ‘til 7 AM. 

Wait – didn’t you just get back from touring? Why are you staying up? 

I’ve been up until 7 AM, sleeping until 4 PM. Just jet-lagged. [Turns camera to show me her cats] With the gang, the crew!

How was the tour? How are you feeling about it?  

Hard as fu— I mean, it was really good. What’d you think? I didn’t see you after the New York show. 

I know! I wish I could have caught you. It was sick. I saw you the second night at Bowery and you wore assless chaps. 

I’m glad you got the assless chaps night. 

It was an interesting contrast – having seen the band play mostly 19 Masters and Qwerty tracks at Sultan Room last summer and then watching you perform SAYA at Bowery Ballroom this year. How do you feel about this tour in the U.S. compared to the last?  

SAYA is a bit more down-the-center, so we got more of the normies at Bowery. We got the bankers and the athletes – versus just the artsy, crazy people who came to Sultan. 

You know what brings the bankers and the athletes? Country music. 

That did come out. It was cool. The American crowds were super fun. I love the fans – they’re all people I would be friends with. They’re all interesting – fantastic artists or dancers. Just weirdos! That’s rare to be able to look into a crowd and be like, I could have a deep conversation with all of y’all. 

One thousand percent. It would hurt to meet someone who interacts with your art and think, I would never chill with you. 

Right. In the TikTok era, people come to your show just to film fifteen seconds of a song they know from social media. I can’t imagine that. My fans are people who are listening to records and keeping them alive. Listening to Led Zeppelin. People who actually like music, not just what’s popular.

Having any kind of audience still evokes positive feelings though, no? 

Yeah, these new people show up not expecting anything and then they leave being like, what the literal fuck? And then they go listen to 19 Masters and have a spiritual awakening. 

When my roommate sent me “If There’s No Seat in the Sky,” I had to sit down. I did have a spiritual awakening. I was like, there’s something I’ve been missing. 

That’s cool. 

Throughout 19 Masters, Qwerty, Qwerty II and SAYA, it seems like you’ve kept your essence, but the sounds are changing all the time. How have you felt about the evolution of your discography since releasing 19 Masters? 

19 Masters was originally just voice notes. I was getting out of a bad record deal where someone was trying to take all the credit and hold all the masters. I ended up putting solely the demos out – the songs were fully produced with him – but I was like you know what, I’m gonna release the demos as is. Without him. They’re good enough. Everyone was telling me they weren’t. 19 Masters came from me trying to get out of a shitty situation and so I did. Some of the demos were from when I was fifteen. 

Wow. 

“Seedless Fruit” was a demo from when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. And then most of SAYA was to tape, analog. I wanted to get into a studio and get players instead of playing every single instrument myself. I wanted to produce it how Zeppelin would, get a house and be like Alright we’re here for a month, we’re gonna come out with a record whether we like it or not. It came out great. 

How were your travels in Japan? 

Great. Rural Japan is something that I can’t even explain. The way they’ve preserved the land and the culture is so beautiful. 

I want to go so badly. I need to experience it first hand. What was it like writing SAYA while you were there? 

I had the intention of finishing the album there – brought this little guitar with me. I ended up taking those songs to the studio, so it worked out. 

Is there a part of you that believed you had to go to Japan to finish SAYA? 

No, I don’t really need to put myself in a particular situation to make music, it’s just always happening. But I did need to force myself to finish the songs. I just wanted to make the record. I knew how it would sound, that it would have pedal steels, and that the lens to the storytelling would be a little country.

It was surprising listening to the album for the first time and hearing the country twang. But the twang didn’t feel misplaced. 

SAYA felt a lot like 19 Masters to me.

What was it like bringing SAYA to the studio to record? 

I’m very intense when I get into the studio. It took two weeks to make the record. Lucian, my brother, was amazing with all the creative engineering, finding new ways to get new tones and effects. I took all the stems – like four-hundred per song – and went through drives, and drives, and drives and produced that shit out on my computer. 

Is there a phrase for the opposite of brain rot? Because that’s what that is. 

Yeah, I did it in a good five, six days, too. I had everything in my head already though, so it didn’t feel like a big feat. 

Are your lyrics coming from life experiences or fantasies? Or is it a mixture?

It’s definitely life experience. I’ve been through some bullshit. I’ve had people die around me. Even in the last two years, the amount of friends or ex-boyfriends who have died is completely insane. I’m a very sensitive person and I care a lot about the people around me. But I was also on my own a lot growing up, kinda self-raised. That means that I had to learn everything the hard way, by myself – from the industry to relationships. 

Yeah. I guess you can learn from the traumatic experiences, but it sucks. Even grappling with that idea is hard – that you have to know the bad to recognize the good. So those past experiences are infused into the music? 

Yeah. A lot of what I write is from my perspective but also from other peoples’ perspectives. “How Long Can You Keep Up A Lie?” is written from someone else’s perspective. A lot of the songs are about what someone else might be feeling because of the hurt they caused me. But that’s what it is when you’re a sensitive, good person. 

When I met you in New York, I instantly felt that goodness. Famous and even semi-famous artists go through a lot of shit. It’s understandable that they would put up walls, but I also think it’s a strength to be able to be vulnerable with people. 

Yeah. I’m self-sufficient. No one can take that away from me. You could put me in any situation and I’ll do exactly what I’ve been doing musically. There’s power in that. I’m really lucky. I’ve put a lot of work into my craft, but I’ve also been given this. Whatever God you believe in, they gave me this shit. 

You started playing music, what, when you came out of the womb? Both of your parents are musicians, right? 

Yeah, I was on the piano immediately. My mom was a piano teacher. She was strict and super into classical technique and history. My dad was all jazz. He played with Jeff Beck and the Temptations and tons of other crazy musicians. My parents worked; I didn’t see them very much. I didn’t have a normal childhood. The house I lived in was a school. We didn’t have bedrooms or anything. 

That’s insane. 

My mom did a lot of charity, so as you can imagine, there were a lot of people in the house who needed help. Immediately, as a kid, I was surrounded by people who have burdens and I became deeply aware of those burdens. I was giving up my room and my instruments because I learned that a part of charity is compassion. I saw hustle and suffering. It was hard for my mom to assimilate into western culture when she came here from Japan. It was crazy for my brother and I to grow up in that kind of environment, too. 

I genuinely can’t imagine what that would be like, but you’re painting a picture. What was your dad like? 

He was always working when I was a kid. On tours, gigging. He would bring us. That was my guiding light. He’d bring me to a theatre gig and I’d be sitting there, watching the musicians in the orchestra pit. I started gigging young and was making money early on, too. I was able to move out at fourteen. I was playing big boy gigs, subbing for forty-year-old bass players when I was a teenager. 

At that age, that’s a wild thing to experience. Were you fearful of the industry at that time? 

Not really. I could play. That’s all I knew. You could have insulted me about anything— my race, age, gender — but I knew I could play. I was hungry. When you don’t have a home to go to, you make that shit outside of it. That’s the positive and the negative. I got somewhere because of the hustle. I didn’t have that comfortability and I still don’t. So music was it for me. 

When you’re fourteen, fifteen, walking to these gigs with your headphones on, what are you listening to? 

Everything. My dad was really into R&B and jazz, Stevie and Ray Charles, Aretha. My brother went right into bee bop and metal. Dragonforce, Dr. John, Nirvana. He gave me a lot of my first CDs when I was eight or nine. And then my mom listened to classical – Chopin and Bach. It played constantly. 

Your music can’t really be narrowed into one genre which is part of the reason why I love it. It’s cathartic even while it exists in all these different spheres. Funny you mentioned Zeppelin earlier, too. My family and I love them.

Bro, Zeppelin really went into their craft. There’s a lot of emulation of them right now, but these kids don’t know what it actually means to be a lunatic. I find that music right now tends to emulate. Everything is online. Everyone conforms because it’s easier than being a weirdo. I’m honestly lucky that I have weirdos in my corner. I’ve got a couple girls who are batshit. But we do the work – we’re batshit, not evil. 

There’s a difference. 

There’s a big difference. I do find that I have a problem with current music. It feels like there’s this real conformity. There’s always been, but now it feels oversaturated. There’s like four sounds. Even with appearance and identity. People look the same. 

Are there artists you’re listening to currently who are giving you renewed hope in newness and individuality? 

It’s some of the people I’ve always listened to: Esperanza Spalding, Fiona Apple, Leonard Cohen. Newer people, yeah, there are. Time will tell. I could conform, too, and everything I say could turn to shit. 

In reference to what you were saying before about conformity — some of these newer TikTok artists are playing so hard into the ‘A B C D pop formula for the algorithm’ and then they go on stage and can’t perform because it’s not who they are. And then there are the musicians who have actually been doing the thing forever – it’s all they know. 

I know. My team is like please stop deleting everything on your social media, but I just find that it cheapens my art, cheapens who I am. Fans can see who I am when they come to a show or listen to the music. The music consists of days of hurt, days of putting together samples, of living and relationships, not being online. 

Performance and fame has replaced artistry. It’s too easy now to create something that’s performative versus something that’s authentic. Authenticity can’t be taught – it’s in you.

I agree with that. What’s something most people don’t know about you? 

That music is two percent of what I do in my day. 

What else are you doing?

I spend most of my free time doing physical shit. Rockclimbing, extreme rollerblading, walking, aerial. I read. 

Creating enclosures for your wild animals. 

That’s a big thing. Rescuing animals, being in nature, training dogs. 

What are you going to do now? 

Get a coffee and go to the gym. 

You just get insanely swole and become a body-builder. 

I’m getting fat-jacked. I’m just eating cake.