GRAE Reveals Elegant New Single ‘Forget You’

Toronto-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist GRAE has just shared her new single Forget You, which is lifted off her debut LP ‘Whiplash,’ out Friday, April 15th. The sentimental new effort was produced by her long-time collaborator Connor Seidel and co-written with Willa Milner.

In less than three minutes, GRAE tells a tale of a romantic relationship that no longer serves her best interests. Forget You is hoisted by her mesmeric vocals, breezy alt-pop melodies, gentle drumbeats, and sophisticated lyricism. GRAE’s vocal delivery is reposeful, as it gently weaves between the track’s lulling arrangements and overall melancholic atmosphere. With lyrics, “Damn I wish I had amnesia, I’d heal real quick / Damn I wish I didn’t need ya, you make me sick”, GRAE hopes to move past a fractured relationship that has proven to do more harm than good despite any fleeting moments of satisfaction.

GRAE shares this about the song: “Forget You was written when I finally decided to let go of a relationship I romanticized. This person no longer served me, yet I still found myself caught up in the nostalgia of it all, looking back on our time spent together with rose-coloured glasses. Whenever I tried to move on, I still thought about them. We always found our way back to each other, and it never ended well. They weren’t good for me and had bad habits. I made their issues my own, tried to fix them, tried to be their saviour. They held me back from pursuing new relationships and exploring new things. This song was therapeutic and emotional for me to write. A release of all these emotions I had been feeling for years. I felt sad writing it because as much as I knew I had to let them go, a part of me didn’t want to, but this song is goodbye to them and our failed attempt at love.”

At the start of 2022, GRAE shared her single Room In The Desert. With this previous effort, GRAE does what she does best, and that’s mix wistfulness with modern malaise. Stemming from a period of despondency and fluctuation, the development of Room In The Desert derived from GRAE channelling creativity from the Cocteau Twins’ 1990 track Cherry-Coloured Funk. When it came to the production for this track, GRAE set out to relocate from her past sonic tendencies. The impact behind the band’s enigmatic lyrics led to GRAE crafting her own sonically trippy endeavour where people could find their own meaning behind her song’s ambiguous undertaking. The track was accompanied by the Gemma Warren-directed music video and served as a hallucinatory fantasy with desert creatures such as a snake, tarantula, and Amazon parrot appearing in the clip.

GRAE has been writing music since the age of 10. After her mother passed away when she was young, she and her father used music as a way to bond. He bought a record player and the pair would listen to a new vinyl every day, broadening her musical horizons. When the vinyl player was silent, ‘80s music channels often flickered in the background.

Dissecting her past to envision her future, GRAE is making new-wave pop music that’s both nostalgic and boundary-breaking. She crafts a hazy pop world filled with spacious vocals, buoyant production, and deeply personal lyrics. It’s both starkly intimate and boldly ambitious – the sort of music that can soundtrack a bedroom hangout just as easily as it can a venue of thousands.

With Room In The Desert, GRAE does what she does best, and that’s mix wistfulness with modern malaise. Stemming from a period of despondency and fluctuation, the development of Room In The Desert derived from GRAE channelling creativity from the Cocteau Twins’ 1990 track Cherry-Coloured Funk. When it came to the production for her single, GRAE set out to relocate from her past sonic tendencies. The impact behind the band’s enigmatic lyrics led to GRAE crafting her own sonically trippy endeavour where people could find their own meaning behind her song’s ambiguous undertaking.

GRAE shares this about the song: “Room In The Desert was written on a day when I lacked inspiration. I came into the session with my producer Connor Seidel not knowing what to write about, and instead of trying to fight that feeling, I embraced it. I decided to write a song about nothing, from nothing, using some random and interesting words we could find. At the time of writing, it had no real meaning, which was the intention, but now I actually find meaning in it, which is interesting. I hope those who listen can find their own unique meaning too.”

Directed by Gemma Warren, the Room In The Desert visuals serve as a hallucinatory fantasy with desert creatures such as a snake, tarantula, and Amazon parrot appearing in the clip. “The music video is everything I could’ve dreamed of. Gemma’s creative vision from the start was really strong, and I trusted her artistic direction a lot,” shares GRAE. “We wanted to create a trippy video that complemented the psychedelic production of the song, something that could bring the song itself to another level. I think the video captures that and helps create an experience for the listener.”

GRAE expresses about her forthcoming album, “Whiplash was born during a time of confusion and indecisiveness. Falling in and out of love with people I thought would be in my life forever but found myself desperately trying to forget. Did I love them, hate them, want to remember them or forget them? I was drowning in the nostalgia of a past I romanticized while coming to terms with the truth of it all. The album is so back and forth in emotion, but so am I. That’s how the title ‘Whiplash’ came to be. When you think you understand where I’m going with something, the mood changes and everything is back at square one. It’s an album filled with so much self-reflection, love, heartbreak, and discovery. Like anything I write, it was really therapeutic for me to get these feelings out. I’m looking forward to the release, as creating an album has always been a goal of mine, and finally putting one out there is exciting.”

GRAE’s 2019 debut ‘New Girl’ paired her alluring vocals with dark, winding hip-hop-inspired beats. It put her on the map, drawing acclaim for Complex and Wonderland, but it left her wondering; “Who am I inspired by?”. 2020’s ‘Permanent Maniac’ EP answered the question for her. The Cure are directly referenced twice on the EP. They’re name-checked on 2725 while Just Like Heaven is name-dropped on her love letter to frontman Robert Smith, Permanent Maniac.

Permanent Maniac was named in Billboard’s ‘Top 30 Pop Songs of the Year’, while the EP has garnered over 5 million streams to date. Meanwhile, she’s featured on Spotify’s ‘Indie Pop & Chill’ and ‘Outliers’ and has been named Apple Music Canada’s ‘Artist of the Week’. In addition, both Permanent Maniac and Soft reached the Top 40 of Canadian Alternative Radio while the latter reached #4 on CBC Top 20.

With over 15 million streams to her name, GRAE is one of the fastest-rising names in alt-pop. She has 120,000 followers on TikTok and 45,000 on Instagram, while her music has been heard on ‘Nancy Drew’ (CW), ‘The Bold Type’ (Freedom), and ‘Virgin River’ (Netflix). She’s finding ears all across the planet, and she’s doing it all on her terms, chasing the music that makes her feel something even if it terrifies her.

Forget You IS OUT NOW
‘Whiplash’ WILL BE AVAILABLE ON APRIL 15 2022