With a bright red jacket and vibrant orange eyeshadow, Greya stands out against the desolate, vacant backdrops in a new music video for latest single, “Thrive,” about a one-sided relationship and the unrequited passion that comes along with it. “The song itself is pretty literal, so we wanted to accentuate the feelings that come with a toxic relationship and emulate them through various settings and emotions,” Greya explains. “You see me alone outside a gas station, going through a kind of mourning, contrasted with an ideal relationship, which we personified at the beach.”
Director and videographer Hannah Gray Hall shot Greya opposite Tony Woodland, who plays her love interest, at Percy Priest Lake and an abandoned storefront in East Nashville. Greya’s bold red jacket symbolizes dauntless energy; red is a color of love, anger, and in some cultures, death. Greya blooms like a flower in the grey landscape—one that, with some courage, will bloom again despite being beaten and bruised.
Extraordinarily, the entire process of making the video came together in the span of three days, including post-production. Greya met her director on set while shooting a video for her previous single “He,” where they instantly connected. “When the ‘Thrive’ video situation became a time crunch, my roommate suggested giving her a call and within minutes we had a shoot date and concept down,” Greya says. With help on set from Greya’s roommates (and a bottle of whiskey they shared to keep warm), the group had the shoot down in one day.
A Philly native, Greya is no stranger to the music scene, having picked up a guitar at age 10 only to start writing songs a year later. She has learned to express herself fearlessly in writing sessions with the likes of Shannon Sanders, Sacha Skarbek, Flo Reuter, and her “Thrive” co-writers Jasper Leak and Chris Keup, resulting in the arresting debut singles she released last year, “He” and “All Hell Breaks Loose.” But self-expression wasn’t always second nature to Greya.
“Developing confidence really evolved all aspects of my music,” she says. “I spent a lot of time questioning myself, which of course pretty much affected everything I did. Getting past the self-doubt is both my biggest accomplishment and my biggest evolution in music.”
With her latest release, we see that the confidence extends to Greya’s personal life as she describes leaving a destructive relationship, finally realizing that her emotions came second to her partner’s selfishness and deciding to let go, while holding space for the heartache she’s suffered. She sings, “Why do I always do this?/Want the guy that always puts me through it.” It’s easy to say in these moments of self-awareness that you’ve learned your lesson, but it’s a lifelong learning process according to Greya. “On paper, I now know how important it is to be up front when getting into any new relationship, which I’ve never done in the past,” she says. “I was always so concerned with being the ‘chill girl’ who didn’t ask too many questions, but that becomes a really difficult hole to climb out of. Going forward, I’d like to be straight up, but that’s easier said than done.”
Despite how many times our hearts are broken, we’re only human. For Greya, facing the sadness in one relationship doesn’t provide immunity for others to come – and that’s okay. “The short answer is yes, I’ve become aware of some things that could improve relationships in the future,” she says. “But the long answer is no, because I usually mess that kind of thing up one way or another.”
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