Getting Freaky with a Psychopath

Macy Gray’s “The Id”

By Caitlyn Hallman

Macy Gray

Macy Gray is crazy.  She is.  She’s mad, and she needs to tell you about it.  Thus her latest CD, The Id, opens with “Relating to a Psychopath,” an upbeat, funky groove tune that immediately sets the theme of the rest of the album: insanity.  “You are relating to a psychopath; your role model is in therapy,” Gray informs us.

This is a much more personal album when compared to Gray’s debut, surprise hit On How Life Is.  While her first CD explored different voices and different characters all through out, treating a diverse canvas of themes ranging from praising God to murder and suicide, The Id has only one voice, her own, and all the songs are about mental illness, men, love, or all three.  It seems that after explaining the nature of existence to her audience with On How Life Is, Gray with her second album felt inclined to tell her fans a little bit more about herself.  She is exposing us to her id, according to Gray her true nature or, “What you do before you think.  The real you...unedited.”

Given that Gray is letting us into her personal space, her realm of interests is rather limited, and one could complain that the lyrics do get a bit repetitive.  How many ways are there to say you are crazy?  But to complain would be to miss the whole point and all the joy of the CD, and that lies in the soul and funk.  The Id is a strictly funk album, unlike On How Life Is, which strayed dangerously into pop territory with such songs as the radio hit “I Try.”  Don’t look for strings or smaltz here.  Don’t look for any anthems to sing forlornly to your lost love.  The closest this album gets to a ballad is “Sweet Baby,” but still this song is much more about getting down with the one you love than making any grand proclamations to them.  The Id is an album to get your freak on to, to party to, to get down with and to pretend your back in the seventies. 

And really how can you not like a CD that has a song entitled “Gimme All Your Lovin’” or “I Will Kill You.”  Surely hearing Gray croon, “It’s amazing what a gun to the head can do/ My baby loves me now as hard as he can/ My methods may be suspect/ But you gotta get love however you can,” is worth the admission price.