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Tara Macri Celebrates the People Who Stay With Us on “Grace”
Updated: Oct 5
Billboard-charting singer-songwriter and award-winning performer Tara Macri returns with “Grace,” a cinematic pop single built around the lasting impact certain people leave on our lives.
Known for a career spanning music, Broadway, film, television, and voice acting, Tara Macri has spent years telling other people's stories on stage and screen. With “Grace,” Tara Macri turns inward, exploring a deeply personal idea that gradually became something universal.
The song began at the piano during a period when Tara Macri found herself missing someone deeply and wondering whether that person could somehow send a sign that everything was okay. As the writing developed, the idea expanded beyond one relationship. “Grace” became a reflection on the people who change us, whether they remain in our lives, have been lost, or were only present briefly.
Instead of allowing grief to dominate the song, Tara Macri focuses on what remains. “Grace” celebrates connection and the ways another person's influence can continue shaping who we become long after circumstances change.
That emotional progression is mirrored in the production. What began as a simple piano demo grew significantly after producer Jordan “AliasOne” Winfield heard the song during a studio session. Mixed by five-time GRAMMY Award winner Chris Lord-Alge, the finished track moves from intimate piano into a soaring cinematic pop arrangement without losing the vulnerability at its center.
The accompanying music video, directed by Julia Baylis and Sam Guest of Anarene Films, extends that idea through the streets of New York City, following seemingly disconnected strangers whose lives briefly intersect.
With “Grace,” Tara Macri doesn't attempt to define who that person should be for the listener. Instead, the song leaves behind one deeply personal question: Who is your Grace?
Grace” began with you missing someone and wondering if they could send you a sign. Was there a specific moment or experience that made you sit down at the piano and start writing? The big moment was losing someone who had been such an important part of my life. And then it was going through all those stages of grief you go through afterward, trying to understand it, trying to make sense of it, and trying to figure out how someone can be here one moment and then suddenly not be. I remember sitting at the piano by myself and having that thought that I think a lot of us have when we lose someone: Where did you go? Are you okay? Can you just send me some kind of sign or something so I know you're still around? And that's really where “Grace” started. I was just trying to work through what I was feeling, and writing has always been a way for me to do that. The beginning of the song almost felt more like a conversation than a song, like I was talking to someone I couldn't talk to anymore.
There's a line, “Send a whisper, a signal, a sound,” and that really captures where my head was at when I started writing it. I think I was looking for some little sign that even though this person was gone, the connection between us wasn't.
The song eventually grew beyond one person into something much more universal. At what point did you realize “Grace” wasn’t only your story anymore? I think that happened when I started playing it for other people. The lyrics are really personal, but the track itself has this upbeat, hopeful feeling to it, so I've found that people react to the song really differently depending on where they are in their own lives. I've had people hear it and say, “I'm adding this to my workout playlist!” And then I'll play it for someone else who really listens to the lyrics, and suddenly they're crying. I actually love that about the song. You can connect to the energy and hopefulness of it, or you can go deeper into the lyrics and hear the story underneath. And then people started telling me who the song reminded them of. Sometimes it was someone they'd lost, but sometimes it was someone who's still here, or even a pet. That's when I realized that even though I wrote “Grace” from such a personal place, the feeling behind it wasn't just mine.
That's really where “Who's Your Grace?” came from. I think everybody has someone who comes into their life and changes it somehow. Sometimes they're with us for our whole lives, and sometimes they're only there for a chapter, but what they give us doesn't just disappear.
Rather than sitting entirely in grief, “Grace” focuses on what people leave behind in us. Was that perspective there from the beginning, or did you have to work your way toward it while writing?
I think that perspective was there from the beginning. The song came from grief and trying to make sense of losing someone, but I never wanted it to only be about the loss. It was also about everything that person leaves behind in you: the love, the memories, the things you carry forward. Even the last line of the song, “Always knew that you could fly,” has that sense of hope and release to it. I think that was always the heart of “Grace.” There’s sadness in it, but there’s also so much love and hope, and we wanted the production to reflect that too.
You’ve spent much of your career performing and helping tell other people’s stories across music, Broadway, film, and television. What feels different when the material is this personal and the story is entirely your own? It’s definitely scarier! When I’m playing a role, I’m telling someone else’s story, so there’s always a little bit of protection there, even though you obviously have to find things in yourself to make the character truthful. With my own music, especially a song like “Grace,” there’s really nowhere to hide. They’re my words and my feelings. But I think everything I’ve done as an actor has made me a better songwriter because I approach a song almost the same way I approach a scene. And with “Grace,” the more personal I allowed myself to be the more other people seemed to see themselves in it which has been really special.
The song ultimately asks listeners, “Who is your Grace?” After creating and living with this song, has your own understanding of who or what “Grace” represents changed? I think it has changed. When I wrote “Grace,” I was writing about one very specific person and what I was going through at that time. I don’t think I was thinking beyond that. But then people started telling me their own stories and who their Grace was, and I loved that. Someone might think of a parent they lost; someone else thinks of their best friend, their partner, or even their dog. It made me realize that we probably all have a few Graces in our lives people who come along at the right time and leave something with us, whether they’re still here or not. So for me now, I think Grace is really about connection and the people we’re lucky enough to have had in our lives.
