How Mia Wray’s queer awakening unfolded a new musical chapter
It was an early morning in September 2022 and Mia Wray was spiralling in the middle of an airport. She was checking in for a flight to London for a writing trip, having booked sessions with several songwriters and producers around the UK. This wasn’t the reason for the rising adrenaline, though. Rather, as the Melbourne pop artist was making her way through check-in and security, she was rapidly realising her life was about to change forever – because she was infatuated with a woman.
“I remember calling my friend at the airport,” Wray tells NME, sitting in the offices of her Australian label, Mushroom Music. “[Saying to her] I feel like I can’t explain it. I feel like something has been ignited or lit in me for the first time in a really long time. I feel giddy, I feel physically hot. I feel like my skin and my face is always flushed and on fire whenever I think about her, and when I think about, I guess, what she represents.
“I was like, well, fuck, what am I going to do? This isn’t just a cute little crush. This is a really big thing. And I’ve been with my partner for seven years. Fuck.”
Wray got on the flight, and for the next few weeks sat in studios and writing rooms trying to untangle the panicked threads in her brain. It was a “surreal” experience, she says, sitting on couches with strangers and sketching out something so vulnerable as her coming to grips with her sexuality. “The amount of strangers’ couches in London that I have cried on…” Wray smiles, shaking her head.
This was the emotional crucible that forged Wray’s piercing debut album ‘Hi, It’s Nice To Meet Me’. It’s a long-awaited debut for the songwriter, who has released three EPs since she was signed by Mushroom in 2012. With popular singles like ‘Monster Brain’ and ‘Stay Awake’, it became clear over the years why Wray was so fiercely championed by the late Mushroom CEO and Australian music industry legend Michael Gudinski: her songwriting was sharp and full-hearted, channelling the likes of HAIM and Maggie Rogers.
Unexpectedly, one of these artistic touchstones would play a part in ‘Hi, It’s Nice To Meet Me’. British songwriter Gabrielle Aplin – a hero of Wray’s for more than a decade – joined one of her songwriting sessions in Bath at the last minute.
“That was a big moment for me,” says Wray. “I had been listening to Gabby’s music since I was 14, and her art was my best mate. I obviously didn’t know her personally, but then all of a sudden I’m on a couch with her writing a song and confiding in her personally about my situation. That was a weird, full circle moment.” The song that fell out of the session was the single ‘Tell Her’ and one of the album’s peaks, Wray’s angst and nervous excitement powered by a driving bass.
Another key session on the trip was with Manchester duo SOAP, who helped carve out the track ‘What If’. “[I said to them], this is what’s happening’,” Wray recounts. “‘It’s going to be shit. I’m going to leave my partner. And then this girl that I’m obsessed with is just going to break my heart and everything’s going to be shit, and I’m going to be alone and queer forever.’ And they were like, ‘Sure, but let’s look at the other side: what if it’s amazing and what if it’s great?”
The songs on ‘Hi, It’s Nice To Meet Me’ are missives from this turbulent time, and they contain an arresting clarity; the songs reveal the truth on the page in real-time. As Wray notes, only a couple of tracks look back in reflection, including the touching and joyous ‘Not The Same As Yesterday’. The production, handled by Aussie producer Rob Munos and London duo Future Cut, is polished, Wray’s vocals pushed to the front of the mix. There are some curveballs too, like the dance track ‘The Way She Moves’, which Wray admits makes “no sense”.
“The sooner everybody knows you’re queer… you can find your people. And the people who aren’t cool with it? Fuck them”
“But that’s why it needs to be on the record,” she laughs. “Because it didn’t make sense that I felt like a 13-year-old in a 27-year-old’s body and having basically a second puberty and wanting to go out and experience nightlife. The excitement of being, ‘I can just hook up with a girl if I want’. And that’s allowed. It’s not to be hidden or ashamed of, I’m in a city now where that is a thing and it’s accepted, and if I want to start a Hinge profile and set it to women only, I can just do that.”
When Wray returned from the UK she broke up with her long-term partner, a difficult but resolute ending chronicled in the upcoming single ‘Sad But True’. “I was just really honest with him,” she says. “And the thing is, I love him so much, but I just wasn’t happy… and at the end of the day, I don’t think he was really happy as well.”
The final song written for the album was the opening title track, born from the moment Wray drove away from the house she and her partner had lived in, watching him in the rearview mirror. Later, she was in a writing session with fellow Melburnian G Flip and producer Aidan Hogg and the whole story poured out of her. Together, they crafted the song that introduced Mia Wray to herself.
Though Wray is open and generous in our conversation, she admits that retelling these stories and presenting the record to the world is a little daunting. “It’s been a delicate balance between being vulnerable with strangers and telling this story, and also being vulnerable with myself and my friends and family… and then just trying to be gentle with myself,” she says. “But it’s been really lovely how welcoming and warm people have been about what it’s about and what I’ve gone through.”
The final song on the record, the lilting ‘Everybody Knows’, is also the oldest, dating back to 2018. Written long before the events of the rest of the album, it sees Wray grappling with feeling out of step with those around her. It isn’t lost on Wray that the song has gained new meaning after the last few years.
“It’s funny how full circle that whole thing has come… [that’s why] I’ve put it at the end,” Wray says. “The sooner that everybody knows you’re queer, we can all just move on and you can find your people. And the people who aren’t cool with it? Fuck them.”
Mia Wray’s ‘Hi, It’s Nice To Meet Me’ is out on Mushroom Music on March 14. Her upcoming Australian tour dates can be found here
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Jules LeFevre
NME
