Broadway fans know her as Marya D from the War and Peace musical adaptation Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. She may have been “old-school” on the Imperial Theatre stage, but McLean’s original music is fresh and raw.
On April 20, her band Grace McLean & Them Apples will play New York City’s Sheen Center as part of their concert series “Inspirations: Women and Their Muses.” If you haven’t heard McLean, imagine “Regina Spektor's quirkiness, Nellie McKay's jazz sensibilities, Fiona Apple's irreverence, Kimbra's sass and Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs' rhythm.”
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Knowing her eclectic sounds, Playbill asked McLean to put together a mixtape of songs that represent her sensibilities. “This is all music that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up the first time I heard it, and continues to affect me as I listen to it today,” she says. “The songs span an emotional range for sure—some of these songs make me cry every time I hear them, and some of them make me laugh, and some of them make me dance. But they all do the same thing to my guts, which is to make my guts talk to my heart talk to my brain talk to my body. I guess we could call that inspiration!”
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GRACE MCLEAN’S PLAYBILL MIXTAPE
“Let's call these the songs that inspire me most as a songwriter, storyteller and performer.”
