Saya Gray shares some of her inspirations in exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover
NME’s latest star of The Cover, Saya Gray, has compiled an exclusive playlist to accompany the story’s launch – check it out below.
The Japanese-Canadian innovator is on this week’s (February 24) edition of The Cover, a weekly manifestation of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read the profile of Saya Gray here, written by Hollie Geraghty and featuring photography by Marisa Bazan.
To accompany The Cover, Gray has curated an exclusive playlist for NME. Titled ‘insp’, the selection gives an extensive look at some of the star’s inspirations and boasts an eclectic mix of artists, from Bon Iver and Brandy to Fall Out Boy and Lady Leshurr. Listen to the full playlist on Spotify below and on Apple Music.
In this week’s The Cover, Gray tells NME about the road trip that spawned her debut album, ‘Saya’. In 2023, the musician decided to make a serious change in her life and spent three months travelling across California and her mother’s native Japan, documenting the “spectrum of emotion” she felt as she explored. Heartache, relationship reckonings and industry stresses poured into the songs that would eventually make up ‘Saya’. “I was really in touch with the grief cycle with this album,” she shares. “I was very cognisant of when I was angry versus sad, missing, scared.”
Elsewhere, the star reflects on getting her start in the background with artists like Daniel Caesar and Willow Smith, and moving out of their shadows with the music she had always been making on the side. “Fame comes with great things, and it also comes with prison,” she explains. “[But] I was at that point where I was like, ‘Am I gonna just keep playing behind stars?’”
Find out more about Saya Gray in the full Cover story here and see who else has been on The Cover here.
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Rhian Daly
NME
