Consumer Guide Album

Macy Gray: The Trouble With Being Myself [Epic, 2003]
I know she's supposed to be an eccentric hipster--helps explain that grit-on-velvet voice, which seems so very outré with female pop options cut back to girlish simplicity and operatic aspiration. But except on the magnificent "I Committed Murder"--revisited here in a jokey variation that doesn't wash--her songwriting hasn't been up to the role. Now, done with that id shit, she finds her voice by pleading with her man to stay or come back as the case may be. Her big argument: "She Don't Write Songs About You." She's pretty, she's rich, she cooks, she reads, she keeps house, she gives good head. Macy will grant all that. But she don't write songs. B+