An Orillia artist, who goes by the stage name Parker Graye, is gracing the cover of Canada’s Country playlist on Apple Music.
The Patrick Fogarty Catholic Secondary School graduate grew up doing “all things artistic” and would frequently perform at school talent shows.
“I was always singing,” Graye said. “I always had a dream to do it but had no idea how that was going to happen.”
The now 33-year-old first pursued snowboarding as her career in Banff, but her heart always belonged to music, which is why, she explained, she moved to Vancouver.
“I actually started in pop music,” she explained. “I grew up on country music, but I loved the style of writing with pop music, and it felt really real to me.”
While producing a pop single in Los Angeles at Capital Records, Graye was approached by Billboard charting producer and songwriter John Strandell to do country music.
“We wrote my debut single in 2017 called Do Over, which became my debut single,” Graye explained. “In 2019 we went down to Nashville to produce it and another single, Before You Leave, and that kind of kicked everything off.”
Graye started spending countless hours writing country music with people in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Nearly three years later, Graye’s music career is starting to take shape.
Graye has recently landed on four separate 'artists to watch' lists from bigger country music publications. She has also surpassed one million streams across all singles on Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Music.
Graye’s latest single, Good At Gettin’ Gone, already has 755,000 streams across the three platforms.
“It’s just crazy,” she said. “It’s so exciting to see that people are getting excited about what I’m doing.”
Over the past two years, Graye has developed a relationship with Apple Music.
“They’ve gotten to know me as an artist,” she said. “They’ve put my songs on different playlists and I’m very fortunate that they like what I’m doing and giving me a shot.”
Two weeks ago, Apple Music contacted Graye to let her know they were putting her on the cover of Canada’s Country playlist, which went live on Thursday night.
“There is something so special about these things,” Graye said. “As an independent artist who doesn’t have a record label, It’s an amazing milestone.”
Graye believes the best is yet to come for her as she works towards some of her bigger goals. In the near future she hopes to drop the EP she’s worked on for the past two years titled Just Another Heartbreak, find a record label, move to Nashville, and play a concert at her dream venue in her stomping grounds, at Boots and Hearts.
“If I got that call from Boots, I would die,” she said with a laugh. “It’s home turf. It’s full circle. It would be amazing.”
You can follow Graye’s journey to stardom on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
