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THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW:David Gray went from being a struggling songwriter to making the best-selling album in Irish history, only to be blamed for spawning a generation of bland balladeers. A decade later, he's ditched most of his band, kept hold of his self-awareness and 'is looking the world in the eye' he tells FIONA McCANN
Hang on a minute. Since when did David Gray become a glass-half-full, Zen-embracing all-night party animal? Can this really be the moody balladeer who was so embraced by the masses while the margins got nasty, deriding his sound as the kind of easy-listening singer-songwriter stuff that – here he steps in himself to provide the put-down – “goes well with smoked salmon, for dinner parties”? His own upfront acknowledgement of his reputation for bland – Rolling Stone once called him “the darling of the Chardonnay-and-chinos set” – is immediately disarming. Yet it appears even old put-downs and hangovers haven’t dampened Gray’s spirits. And despite the fact that he’s just arrived after an epic journey from Zurich through Paris to Shannon and then on to Galway city, all he can talk about is the beautiful drive through the west of Ireland. “So many beautiful horses . . .” he trails off, staring into the middle distance.
