What Happened to Macy Gray? A New Album and Big Tour in 2026

If you had a radio on in 1999, you heard it: that cracked, husky, instantly recognizable voice singing “I try to say goodbye and I choke.” Macy Gray didn’t sound like anyone else, and “I Try” turned her into one of the most distinctive new stars of the era — a Grammy winner with a sound that was equal parts soul, funk, and her own weird magic. Then the charts moved on, the radio got quieter, and a lot of people lost track of her. But Macy Gray never actually went anywhere. So where is she in 2026? The answer is busier than you’d expect.

01Profile

Full name

Natalie Renée McIntyre (stage name Macy Gray)

Born

September 6, 1967 (58 years old)

Birthplace

Canton, Ohio, USA

Occupation

Singer, songwriter, actress

Best known for

"I Try" (1999), the album "On How Life Is" (1999)

Awards

Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (2001)

A quick note on that birth year: a few sources list 1969 or 1970, but the most widely cited references put Macy Gray’s birth at September 6, 1967. Either way, the woman has been making music for the better part of three decades — and she’s still releasing new records, which is more than most of her late-’90s peers can say.

02The Rise

A voice nobody could fake

Macy Gray grew up Natalie McIntyre in Canton, Ohio, and famously got into singing almost by accident — she was a songwriter first, and the story goes that she ended up cutting a demo of her own material when other singers fell through. That raspy, slightly off-kilter voice, often compared to Billie Holiday, was the thing people either loved immediately or had to grow into. Once it caught on, it caught on hard.

”I Try” and “On How Life Is”

Her 1999 debut album, “On How Life Is,” was the breakthrough. The lead single, “I Try,” climbed to number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of those songs that seemed to play everywhere at once — coffee shops, car radios, the closing credits of every other movie. In 2001, “I Try” won the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, beating out a stacked field and cementing Gray as a genuine star rather than a one-summer novelty.

The album went multi-platinum, and over the years she’d go on to sell more than 25 million records worldwide. For a stretch right around the millennium, Macy Gray was the sound of a certain kind of cool — soulful, a little eccentric, impossible to mistake for anyone else.

03Life After the Hit

Here’s where a lot of “whatever happened to…” stories get bleak. Macy Gray’s doesn’t. The hits got smaller, sure — that’s just what happens when the radio format that loves you moves on — but she kept working steadily across albums, acting roles, and collaborations.

• 1999Debut album "On How Life Is" is released; "I Try" becomes a global hit.
• 2001Wins the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "I Try."
• 2000sReleases follow-up albums and branches into acting, appearing in films including "Training Day" and "Spider-Man."
• 2010sContinues releasing studio albums across genres — soul, jazz standards, even a reimagining of Stevie Wonder's "Talking Book."
• 2020sStays active with new singles, collaborations, film voice work, and international touring.

By her own count, Gray has released around ten studio albums and earned five Grammy nominations over her career. The “I Try” era may be what most casual fans remember, but it’s genuinely just one chapter in a long, restless body of work.

04Reinvention and Range

An actress as well as a singer

If you’ve watched movies in the last 25 years, you’ve probably seen Macy Gray without clocking it. She popped up in Antoine Fuqua’s “Training Day” (2001), appeared in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” (2002) as herself, and has dotted her résumé with film and TV roles ever since. More recently, she lent her voice to the animated film “Sneaks,” which hit theaters earlier this year.

Never afraid of a left turn

Part of what’s kept Macy Gray interesting is that she refuses to just re-record “I Try” for the rest of her life. She’s done jazz-standards records, soul records, electronic-leaning singles, and one-off curveballs. In 2024 she put out the high-energy single “I AM” with New Orleans bounce artist Big Freedia, and she’s leaned into newer release formats and digital-art experiments along the way. She also turned up as a surprise contestant on “The Masked Singer UK,” which is exactly the kind of left-field move that fits her.

“We’re going to be performing all the songs you want to hear, plus a few from my new album.” — Macy Gray, on her 2026 touring plans (May 2026)

05What She Is Doing Now

A new album: “The Trouble With The Truth”

In 2026, Macy Gray is rolling out a new studio album, “The Trouble With The Truth,” with new singles teasing it along the way. One of the tracks is a cover of Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” — a cheeky reinterpretation that’s very much in keeping with her sense of humor. It’s her first major album cycle in a while, and she’s been clear that fans will get to hear the new material live before it fully lands.

”The Encore Tour” and a big return Down Under

The headline news for 2026 is touring. Gray announced an extensive run through Australia and New Zealand — billed as part of “The Encore Tour” — described in the press as her most expansive regional Australian tour to date, with dates stretching across metropolitan and regional venues into late 2026. It also marks her first New Zealand shows in roughly a decade. According to her own promotion, Australian audiences will be among the first anywhere to hear the new album performed live.

Still unmistakably Macy

Between the album, the tour, the voice work, and the occasional surprise TV appearance, the through-line is consistency. Macy Gray didn’t reinvent herself into someone unrecognizable; she just kept being the eccentric, soulful, hard-to-categorize artist she always was, long after the spotlight that found her with “I Try” swung elsewhere.

06Summary

The short version: Macy Gray never disappeared — pop radio just got quieter about her. She’s spent the years since “I Try” building a deep, genre-hopping catalog and a steady acting career, and in 2026 she’s arguably more active than she’s been in years.

So if you’ve been wondering whatever happened to the woman behind “I Try,” the answer is reassuringly simple: she kept going. Macy Gray is still writing, still touring, still doing exactly what she wants — and in 2026, more people are listening again.