“I think there’s a perversity to this band, in that we want to make songs that people love, but at the same time they’re asking themselves if they should feel bad about loving them,” says Teddy Gray about his band Wifey.

“Mary Ann Leaves the Band” serves as an irresistible, infectious introduction to this fresh ensemble hailing from Brooklyn, New York.

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You can discover ‘Mary Ann Leaves the Band’ featured on the Best Power Pop of 2024 Spotify Playlist.

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Was there a particular moment or experience that struck you, signaling that you were onto something special with this project?

I wrote this song after Carly and I had just wrapped up band practice, and I had a little time to kill as she got ready for work. It was written in about half an hour. A lot of the best songs come immediately, especially dumb pop songs like this. And then I just remember going to bother her at work and pitching it to her. She reacted with an equal amount of glee and horror, which was a pretty good indication that it should be the first single. Seeing people react the same way over and over as we started to play it live cemented it further. I think there’s a perversity to this band, in that we want to make songs that people love, but at the same time they’re asking themselves if they should feel bad about loving them.

As an artist, the act of baring your emotions to the world is profound. Does this vulnerability come naturally to you, or is it a constant journey of finding comfort?

Ah yes, the profound vulnerability of Mary Ann Leaves the Band. I think that most Wifey songs don’t really require us to bars our souls, though the mask does slip occasionally. But at least for myself, I’ve never been someone who thinks that a songwriter needs to be autobiographical, or write about their personal lives to reveal who they are. I like writing in character. I feel like the songs I write very rarely come from a place of “Oh, I need to get this off my chest” or “I need to process these emotions,” it’s always more like “Oh, this would be a good idea for a song.” I treat it more like a writing assignment. Which probably sounds really boring, but it’s actually much more fun for me that way. I don’t feel the need to continuously write about my personal life. My life is boring. Most artist’s lives are, although they seem to think otherwise. If Wifey hits it big and suddenly we’re jet-setting around the world, living off coke and red peppers, and freezing our piss like Bowie in 1976, then sure, maybe I’ll feel to compelled to write about that. But for now, I like writing little character pieces about high school marching band. I think it reveals a lot more about Wifey, and our view of the world, than most confessional songwriting does.

Defining a song’s completion can be elusive. How do you determine when a composition has reached its final, ready-to-record form?

When writing a song like Mary Ann Leaves the Band, you can’t sit around tweaking it or think about it for too long, otherwise you’d think better of it and never finish. There are other songs that I sit on for weeks or even months trying to get them just right, and then there are ones like this that just fall out of the sky pretty much completed. For myself at least, you just feel it when a song is done. When the words get across what you want to say, when the chorus hits as hard as you want it to, when all the parts have been ironed out and everything about it is satisfactory, let it be. You could nitpick a song to death and ask yourself “Is absolutely every second of this as good as it could possibly be?” but it’s more fun to just move onto another song.

Striking a balance between experimental artistry and commercial appeal is a challenge. How do you navigate this dynamic within your music?

I think we’re lucky in the sense that our goal is not to push the boundaries of where rock music can go, or challenge people. We just want to make the catchiest songs of all time. So at least for me, I never feel like I really have to compromise my artistic integrity with Wifey, because pop songs that could be enjoyed by anyone with ears are the kind of songs that I want to be writing anyway, at least for this project. There’s certainly stuff about us that may be offputting to some, like some of the lyrics and subject matter, or the fact that some of our songs are well under two minutes long. But we’re really not doing anything avant garde here. If you like choruses, you should like Wifey.

While you can’t dictate how people interpret your music, are there specific elements you wish to highlight that set your songs apart?

We want people to jam to them the way we jammed to our favorite songs back when we were young and shameless. I want people to feel the way I did when I heard “That Thing You Do!” in the backseat of my parents car when I was six, or how I felt hearing “Stacy’s Mom” at 11 (Both Adam Schlesinger songs, RIP). I think a lot of our stuff is maybe more tongue-in-cheek and narrative-driven than most rock music is these days, so I would hope people appreciate those aspects of it. But yeah, I just hope people air-guitar along to us in the car, let it soundtrack their sugar rushes or benders, and get the choruses stuck in their head for weeks until it drives them to madness. Just come to our shows and dance.

Looking ahead to the next couple of months, what exciting plans or projects are on the horizon for you?

Well, our first EP “Just A Tease” is finished, so we’re just figuring out our release strategy for that now. But it’ll be out sooner rather than later. Other than that, the full album is written (as well as the bulk of albums 2 and 3 lol), so I just hope some label picks us up and gives a zillion dollars so we can record it and take over the world. That’s the plan. If we’re not selling out and soundtracking Taco Bell commercials by this time next year, we’ll be failures.