Gretta Ray Returns with New Single ‘Swimming, Crying’

Gretta Ray is back.

After stepping away from music in 2024 following a life-threatening illness, the Australian singer-songwriter has returned with a new single “Swimming, Crying” – and if it’s any indication of what’s to come, the wait has been more than worth it.

Tender, reflective, and emotionally unguarded as always, the track finds Ray leaning further into the intimate storytelling that has long defined her songwriting. But while the vulnerability remains, there’s a newfound warmth and confidence to her sound, with “Swimming, Crying” balancing heartbreak and hope in equal measure.

It comes after two years of recovery, reflection, and a return to the bedroom songwriting sessions that first shaped her career, serving as a snapshot of everything Ray has experienced during her time away. As she describes it, “Swimming, Crying” is “the most honest sonic representation” of her journey through grief, healing, and the complicated reality of learning to hold both at once.

We sat down with Ray exclusively to discuss her return to music, the realities of recovery, and how stepping away from the spotlight reshaped her relationship with songwriting, performing, and herself.

Rolling Stone AU/NZ: It’s been so lovely seeing you pop up on stage here and there – with Maisie Peters, Mumford & Sons, now touring with Matt Corby… How are you feeling, dipping your toes back in to being on stage?

Gretta Ray: I’m really loving being back on stage. I have missed it dreadfully over the last couple of years, not really being able to do it as much, and every brief moment that I’ve had the opportunity to jump up, whether it was the small little fan shows that I did a year ago or singing with my darling friends, long-time friends as well.

Any opportunity to sing, especially when it’s harmonies for other people, really is my favourite thing in the world. So I’m having a great time getting to do it again.

I want to go back to 2024, Missy Higgins’ ARIA Hall of Fame induction was your first performance after taking a break for your health. Can you take me back to that moment, and tell me how it compares to being on stage now?

That’s such a great question because it is really different. I mean, I was so overjoyed to have been asked by Missy to join that performance for a range of reasons. That was the first time that I had been back on stage since becoming critically ill, and by that point in time, I was missing it so much and I was so desperate for the chance to perform again.

I loved the fact that it was an opportunity to perform alongside Missy, and for such a huge moment for her! Her music has been such a large part of my life and a very big part of my healing, you know, turning to her records about grief. Being on stage with Angie [McMahon] and G [Flip], and seeing Amy [Shark] perform for that medley as well… the whole group of people that I’ve known for a really long time in this industry, I think that was really special.

However, I was still pretty fresh out of being ill. It was in November, I think, it was maybe five or six months after [I fell ill]. And so I was still working through a lot in my recovery, both physically and mentally.

Now, it having been two years since I got sick and doing these little guest spots, I have thankfully a lot more trust in my body and in my approach to performing. I’ve really had some time to properly heal and reflect, and I can kind of own it a little bit more now. It was such an incredible experience getting to perform with Missy, but it’s crazy now to think back to that – I did still have a way to go with getting ready to be doing this full time again. Having had the time, I’m in a much better spot.

It’s really so wonderful to hear you’re doing so much better now. Knowing you’ve got such a loyal fanbase, they must be pretty excited to see what this next chapter has in store for you. 

Yeah, thank you! My audience has been incredibly supportive and very understanding. I mean, we had a time where I was performing a lot and we were spending a lot of time together because I had been doing the album cycle for Positive Spin in such a big way. So with the timing, when I got sick was coming to around the time I was going to start writing – I think I had started writing for the next thing, but then things took a turn. So it was a very dramatic way for me to be out of cycle.

But I really appreciate their patience. Every time I have the opportunity to see their faces, it just… I’ve really missed them too. So it’s really good to be back on stage and have that connection again in those rooms. It’s really beautiful.

We’re obviously here to talk about your grand return to music. What does that phrase – “return to music” – mean to you as a songwriting? Does it feel like you’re picking up from where you left off with Positive Spin or do you feel like we’re meeting a new, different version of yourself?

It definitely doesn’t feel like I’m picking up where I left off at all, because the nature of the music is so much more different than how I imagined it would be, had I not gotten sick. I think that as far as what I was putting on display with my project, I was in a very solid pop space for the last record. And I kind of imagined that I would continue on that path. So with what kind of happened in my life and what I ended up writing about, I quite naturally gravitated back to my roots, I suppose, in terms of the songs that I was writing.

I was doing a lot of writing on my own for this next chapter to start, and that experience really lended itself to a different sound – something I probably began with, you know, when I first started doing this like 10 years ago. So it definitely feels like we’re in a very different place, but I think that it’s the most honest sonic representation of what the last couple of years of my life have looked like.

You said you had sort of started writing new material before you got sick – have you used any of that or has that influenced your sound now in any way?

It’s really interesting… I didn’t end up using anything that I was working on, because what I was inspired to write – so directly about the grief that I was experiencing and all of the different layers of that – I just knew had to be drawn from when my life kind of turned on its own. It needed to be from that point forward, you know, what my thoughts and feelings were because my perspective around so many things had shifted so much. I didn’t feel like those beginnings to whatever I thought would be next, represented any of that.

I don’t remember thinking, ‘Oh, I need to now start from scratch’. It was gradual as I realised where I was arriving mentally. I was like, ‘Oh, I think the next thing is not going to sound/look like how I had imagined it would’. I could feel, through the nature of how I was writing on my own, what songs were going to suit what was going to come next. I remember the first song that I was like, ‘This is in the new world, this is for the next thing’. That was when I was back at home and writing in my bedroom on my own and starting to gather those songs.

Was there anything that surprised you in that process, going back to your bedroom and writing on your own?

In a way, yes. I think the most addictive and enticing thing about being a songwriter is that I’ve been writing songs since I was, what, a seven-year-old? And it is still something that takes me by surprise. You don’t know what songs are going to come out of you, especially when you are moving through a really challenging, life-changing period. Songs like “Swimming, Crying” are songs that I don’t even really remember writing.

It’s this kind of thing that can take over you when you’re in that space and you are getting these ideas and you just feel like you’re a channel for the song that is arriving with you. I mean, I remember writing it, but it’s like suddenly all of these melodies and lines just are with you and you’re kind of like, ‘Oh, where did that come from? – it’s come from the months of thinking and reflecting and feeling and suddenly it’s this four-and-a-half-minute piece.

Some of the songs that I wrote when I started writing on my own in my room took me by surprise in the sense that I was in such agony at that point in my life and I couldn’t believe I had the capacity to write. I am so thankful that I did because I think that it very easily – and it would have been okay if it had gone the other way – but I could have very easily been like, ‘It’s actually too hard for me to try and do this, to try and convey these feelings’. But it was the only thing that I had, to be honest, at the time.

I lost a lot of things in my life in that time and the one thing, as cliché as it is, that was there was the fact that I could retreat to my guitar, write something about all of the layers and complexities of the grief that I was experiencing and then I could go to the kitchen and show my parents. That was my one pillar of promise, I guess. The ability to write in that really difficult time, I think that was what took me by surprise.

Your new song “Swimming, Crying” is beautiful – thank you for your vulnerability! Can you tell me about why you wanted the song to be so raw and intimate? You’ve always been known for beautifully emotional storytelling in your songwriting, but did this feel different at all?

Yeah, hugely. In terms of why I wanted to start here, like with this song, there was just something about it. It was actually written quite late in the process, and I don’t think I could have seen it coming. I was doing a lot of reflecting – I put this on my social media – but June is an eerie and sacred time for me because it is the time in 2024 when I first became sick, and so I was thinking a lot about the year that had been, and the many different layers of heartbreak that had come with that time, which put me back in a spot of feeling quite heavy and sad.

There was a part of me that expected that when I reached a year on from, you know, everything shifting, that maybe that heaviness would have subsided. Everyone expects that with any kind of heartbreak or grief, you reach a certain point and you’re like, ‘Surely it’s done now’. But as they say, healing is not a linear thing and you’re going to be dipping in and out of that feeling when you least expect it. So I think that’s why it felt good to start with “Swimming, Crying” because it acknowledges that – that there is this glimmer of hope.

The real, tangible healing thing for me was retreating to the ocean and getting in the water, it was something that helped me through that difficult time. Just being like ‘It’s hard and I feel down’, but I know this pattern well enough now that I’m going to be in the darkness and then it’s going to feel easier and then maybe it’s going to get harder… I know this path so well and I just have to trust it and take the moments where I’m feeling held like when I’m in the ocean, take those moments and hold on to them and let them kind of carry me through.

That’s probably why I wanted to start with “Swimming, Crying” because I do feel like it holds that theme of grief that I will continue to explore, but it also does nod to the fact that there’s real healing in sitting with that.

I wanted to ask about the little voice note towards the end of the song, where we hear something about big changes and heralding in a new chapter. What’s the story behind that? 

Basically that is my friend Ziggy, who was new in my life at the time that they sent me that voice note and I just thought that it was so caring and beautifully put. It was a coincidence because when they sent me that voice note – because I was feeling a bit sad and they were giving me some advice – I got the voice note while I was in the midst of writing “Swimming, Crying”, I was in a sublet in Paddington in Sydney, and I was writing this song and it was a full moon and I was writing about the fact that it was a full moon and then I get this voice note saying it’s a full moon in Sagittarius and it means this, this and this and I was just like, ‘Whoa, that is such a crazy coincidence, I’m literally writing about the moon right now’.

Then we went into the studio the next day to put the demo down and I was like, ‘I just have to include this gorgeous voice note from my new friend’, and I loved it. Ziggy and I now actually live together and we live by the beach in Sydney and the other night, the eve of June, it was another full moon in Sagittarius, so we did a tarot reading and we wrote our intentions for the month and things we wanted to release and I was like, ‘Oh, this is just so magical that it’s a year on from when I wrote this song and this person has become so significant to me and they were right that it was very much the beginning of a new chapter’. I just really loved it.

There’s this upbeatness in the voice note, and and that tone being in a song that is so sombre and gentle, I think really makes you go, ‘Oh, what’s this person saying?’. That slight juxtaposition, I don’t know, I think it’s perfect and I love that they’re in that song. It’s really special.

Talk about fate, hey?

I know. It’s very beautiful. Also, I will just never not be obsessed with putting voice notes in songs. I’ve done it since I started my first album – I have voice notes of my best friends from high school when we went travelling together, voice notes of my old manager Sam, I love to hear the voices of these people that are mirrors or witnesses to my life and getting their takes on things.

You’re big on collaboration – did you work with anyone on this song?

I recorded the first demo of “Swimming, Crying” with Robbie De Sa who produced my first album, Begin to Look Around, he has an additional production credit on “Swimming, Crying”. Also Matt Corby and Gabriel Strum/Japanese Wallpaper, the two of them co-produced – you can hear a little bit of their instrumentation right at the end of what is a very stripped back recording.

Gab produced Positive Spin and he and Matt have worked on my new music. So having three musicians that I admire so much and trust so much with some very heavy music, they’ve all been a really big part of these last couple of years. It means so much to me to get to work with people that I admire and trust so much. Collaboration is so important to me and I’ve been very held by my collaborators for this next thing.

This next chapter you’re embarking on, what does it look like for you as a songwriter? Are you exploring themes you haven’t before?

I think the point of difference is maybe in the songwriting, because as you said, my songwriting has always been personal and very diary entry-esque, and I think where I felt empowered in the slightly different approach with writing for this next thing was that I’m not always trying to neatly put a bow around everything, and there are songs that I have written that I’m going to put out that just totally admit defeat, essentially.

I made a whole record about the fact that I don’t like doing that – with Positive Spin.Like, there is that element of hope in the new music, because I think that’s what we turn to music for, to be seen and then to find some way to look at it that’s going to make coping with the hard stuff easier. So that’s always going to be in my songwriting, but I think that being like, ‘It’s really hard right now, and I’m just going to tell that story, acknowledge the pain’, features in the new music too.

Living in the new music is something that I’m really proud of, because as much as it was horrendous to revisit, it was worth it for the new thing. Again, I can’t believe I was able to capture this while it was happening.

As much as music is an escape to find joy and happiness, it is also a friend to have when you’re feeling defeated or you’re dealing with grief – it feels like this new project will be a perfect way to experience both.

Yeah, I would really hope so. My last record really was an album that you can put on when you’re getting ready to go out or you’re with your friends, you’re having drinks, there’s a picnic happening. It really lent itself to that sense of community.

With my upcoming music, it’s more of an intimate ‘listen in your headphones on a walk’ situation – and I really like the fact that that’s a bit of a juxtaposition from the last thing.

Gretta Ray’s “Swimming, Crying” is out now.