David Gray

Before the bedroom

David Gray was born in Sale, Cheshire, in 1968 and moved at nine to Solva, Pembrokeshire, in Wales. He studied at Carmarthenshire College of Art and then Liverpool School of Art. His first two albums, A Century Ends (1993) and Flesh (1994), won him a following in folk-rock circles but sold poorly. Sell, Sell, Sell followed in 1996, and Pitchfork later wrote that EMI abandoned him after it.

Gray remembered that stretch as a Spinal Tap-style disaster, with a sign outside one gig reading "Barbecue ribs sold out, David Gray 9pm". He said he dropped his manager and his label to work out what he wanted.

White Ladder

He had never captured his live energy in the studio, so he started recording at home in Stoke Newington, London, with a computer, a sampler and a keyboard. Hartnoll of Orbital gave him a small mixing desk and recommended a Roland Groovebox drum machine. Alone with it during a dinner party, he found the chords and lyrics of Please Forgive Me arriving, and called it the starting pistol for the record. The producer Iestyn Polson and the drummer Craig McClune joined him. The title track came in a day, and then Babylon landed.

Gray said the money came from donations from his old boss Dave Boyd at Hut Records and another friend. They pressed 5,000 copies and released White Ladder on his own IHT label in Ireland in November 1998. It did not chart at first, but the albums sold from the merchandise stand at shows. In Ireland it spent six weeks at number one and went on to be the country's biggest-selling album.

Dave Matthews took him on tour in the United States and released the album there in 2000 as the first release on his label ATO. In Britain it entered at 69 in April 2000 and reached number one on 5 August 2001, almost three years after it first appeared. Babylon reached number five on the singles chart. In the United States the album peaked at 35 on the Billboard 200, and Gray was nominated for Best New Artist at the 44th Grammy Awards. It has sold more than three million copies in Britain and over seven million worldwide.

After the hit

Two collections followed it into the British top 20 in 2001: The EPs 1992-1994 and Lost Songs 95-98, which was recorded over ten days in October 1999. Gray also sang on Orbital's single Illuminate. A New Day at Midnight (2002) went in at number one, ahead of Gareth Gates's debut, and sold nearly 150,000 copies in its first week, though reviews were mixed. Gray later described the years after White Ladder as the difficult period. He said fame was "a bit overwhelming" and that he realised he liked his privacy. After three years of winding down because of exhaustion, he returned with Life in Slow Motion (2005), which also opened at number one.

McClune and Gray parted in 2007. Draw the Line (2009) was made in his own Church Studios, once the Eurythmics' base, with a duet with Annie Lennox. Foundling followed in 2010, which Gray called a private record. Mutineers (2014) was produced by Andy Barlow, and Gold in a Brass Age (2019) by Ben de Vries. A 20th anniversary edition of White Ladder came out in 2020, and the tour that went with it was cut short by the pandemic. Skellig (2021) was recorded at Edwyn Collins' studio in Helmsdale, in the north of Scotland.

His official site calls Dear Life his 13th album, made with Ben de Vries, with vocals from his daughter Florence Gray and a duet with Talia Rae. Nightjar appeared in 2026, and the Guardian noted a UK and Ireland tour from 10 June to 26 July. Gray has said that White Ladder's success paved the way for later soul-baring singer-songwriters, and has also said it left him dismissed as slight.