Australian singer-songwriter Gretta Ray has released her third album, Heartsong, which documents the aftermath of a life-threatening heart infection that hospitalised her for six weeks. The album, out on 30 October, marks a significant departure from her earlier pop sound, embracing a softer, folk-inspired style.
A slow and terrifying onset
The illness that almost killed Ray announced itself gradually. First came chills that left her shivering inexplicably under the doona, followed by gastrointestinal symptoms and a splitting headache. Fatigue flattened her, keeping her in bed for days. But it was when she woke up one morning with double vision that she knew something was seriously wrong.
Ray went straight to hospital and stayed there for six weeks. After a long and agonising series of tests, she was diagnosed with infective endocarditis, a life-threatening infection of the heart that can cause a strange, gradual march of symptoms. She was put on an antibiotic drip “pretty much 24 hours a day”, which saved her life. At just 26 years old, her age made her an outlier on the cardiology ward.
“Being young and being motivated and ambitious, you think you’re invincible, and you’re not,” she says. “The scariest part of it all was not being able to be told that I was going to be OK … That’s going to live with me for ever, and there are still times when I find myself getting anxious and thinking those terrifying thoughts – like, ‘maybe you’ll die’.”
A career on the brink
Before her illness, Ray had built the foundations of a promising music career. She got her big break at age 18 when she won a Triple J song competition, leading to a major-label deal with EMI and two albums of bright, sunny pop music. Her second album, Positive Spin, saw her play 50 tour dates in 2023, including her biggest headline show to date, a gig in London to a crowd of 600.
In mid-2024, Ray moved from Melbourne to London with her then-boyfriend, planning to write another record and push her career forward. “I was going to write another record. It was going to be even more pop. I was going to be bigger; shinier!” she says. “And then two days into being in the UK, I went to the emergency room.”
After her discharge, Ray stayed in the UK for another month until she was fit enough to fly home to Australia, “heartbroken” to give up on her London dream. A week after returning home, her best friend’s mother died; three days after that, she and her boyfriend broke up. She was having panic attacks and seeing multiple therapists. Physically, she contended with major weight loss and weakness, as weeks bedridden had wasted her muscle mass.
Rebuilding through music
Ray was forced to step back from music, cancelling her remaining tour dates for the year and retraining her vocals from “level zero” after illness altered her lung capacity. She spent six months rebuilding her strength and attending specialist appointments, before turning a mental corner. “Every single day of January was perfect, because I’m alive!” she says.
When she returned to the studio to write upbeat pop, it didn’t work. “I would hate the song. I would get really bad writer’s block,” she says. Instead, she found herself writing about something real and honest and painful, and the songs came. Six months later, with 50 demos about sickness, breakups, grief and recovery, she began a four-week recording session at Matt Corby’s Rainbow Valley Studios, collaborating with Corby and her longtime producer Gab Strum.
Heartsong is an ode to all Ray lost and rebuilt after her illness. The lead single, Swimming, Crying, nods to the healing properties of Sydney’s saltwater, where she became “addicted” to ocean swimming and eventually moved. The album ends on the track Lucky (In My Life), with the line: “Get sick, get well, get by/How lucky am I?”
Ray now leads what she calls “a better life” than before – one with less stress and more meaning. She prioritises relationships above all else and is “so protective” of her health, as infective endocarditis left her with a damaged mitral valve that requires regular echocardiograms. She has let go of the pressure to “build this empire of Gretta Ray”. “When Positive Spin didn’t get nominated for an Aria, I was so devastated … And I just can’t have that become my life again,” she says.
