Mia Wray shares her mental health struggles with new single 'Fake A Smile'

Mia Wray has shared her new single 'Fake A Smile', alongside announcing a series of UK and European tour dates.

The track is taken from Wray's debut album 'hi, it's nice to meet me', which features twelve tracks including previous single 'Nice To Meet Me', and is due on 14th March.

"This is more about the mental health side of things, which I have struggled with a lot," Wray explains. "Especially from being signed to a label and having management, more people invested in the business and the project… I naturally feel the pressure to keep shit together and do the job. Put on the smile. Putting on the smile, doing the show, and then the curtain closes and you're like, 'How much longer can I keep doing this for?'"

"I struggle a lot with body image; I hate the fact that my face and my body is the product, and that I have to sell that. But I've accepted that it's just part of the job... It's the mental health journey behind being the image and being my own boss; having people who are financially and emotionally invested in my career, trying to keep it together so it works out."

Speaking about the album's title, she adds: "It's all a bit of a blur, the whole realising that I was probably queer. The first thing I had in my notes was that I felt like I was saying hello to myself for the first time in a really long time. 'Hi, it's nice to meet me' just kept coming up in my brain as a theme. I thought it was cool and unique, I hadn't really seen that around a lot. It felt right. It was a real slap in the face like, 'Oh that's who I am, that makes sense…'"

The dates in full read:

FEBRUARY
22 Supersonic Records, Paris, France
23 Continental, Brussels, Belgium
24 Paradiso - Small Hall, Amsterdam, Netherlands
26 Servant Jazz Quarters, London, UK
27 Servant Jazz Quarters, London, UK