RAE OF SUNSHINE
HER SOOTHING SOUNDS AND SOULFUL LYRICS ARE ETCHED INTO THE MINDS – AND LIVES – OF A GENERATION. AS CORINNE BAILEY RAE PREPARES TO RELEASE NEW MUSIC, ARIELLE TCHIPROUT DISCOVERS A WOMAN WHO RADIATES LIGHT AND WARMTH – EVEN IN THE DARKEST OF TIMES
Red meets soul sensation Corinne Bailey Rae
Whenever I hear the song Put Your Records On by Corinne Bailey Rae, I’m transported back to a time before Brexit and Covid-19; to the sweltering hot summer of 2006. I can still picture my teenage self, sunbathing on the grass in my parents’ garden, listening to the acoustic and sax drift through my headphones from my ipod Mini. I was unsure of who I was, but fizzing with hope and excitement about who I might become. In that silky, soulful voice, Bailey Rae sang, ‘You’re gonna find yourself somewhere, somehow.’ And I felt that perhaps I would. I’d return to that song – and many others of Bailey Rae’s that followed – repeatedly over the years, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. For so many young women, Bailey Rae’s delicate jazz-pop felt like joy and possibility set to music. And playing those songs, even now, can feel like a ticket to simpler, happier times. But just as the tapestry of my life has changed in the 14 years that have passed since the release of that song, so too has Bailey Rae’s, quite drastically. In 2008 – in the midst of Bailey Rae’s stratospheric rise to fame, which saw her become only the fourth female British act to have her first album debut at number one in the UK – she suffered personal tragedy. Her husband of seven years, jazz musician Jason Rae, died from an accidental overdose. Describing it as feeling like ‘the end of my life completely’, it was a year before Bailey Rae could write again. Then, in 2010, she emerged ‘from the wreckage’ and released The Sea, a moving yet hopeful collection of songs about love and loss, many of them written about Jason. She continued to channel her emotions into her music, releasing The Love EP, a mini record dedicated to love-song covers, and earning a second Grammy award for her performance of Bob Marley’s Is This Love (her first came in 2008, after being featured on legendary jazz pianist Herbie Hancock’s album, River: The Joni Letters). But her biggest ‘revelation’ was finding love again. In 2013, she married her longtime friend, producer Steve Brown, and after releasing her third album, The Heart Speaks In Whispers in 2016, the pair had two daughters together.
When we speak over Zoom on a grey, drizzly afternoon, Bailey Rae, now 41, is still on maternity leave with her youngest. She’s everything my teenage self would expect and more – thoughtful and passionate, with a warm Yorkshire accent, sparkling eyes and her trademark natural curls tied in a low ponytail. She’s calling from her home studio in Leeds, a seemingly chaotic room full of instruments, cables and speakers. ‘I like to have everything around me,’ she says, as she shares stories of collecting eclectic instruments from around the world.
But, more importantly, she’s in here because she’ll be recording and editing after we speak. She’s working on a new album ‘inspired by an art archive’, plus, she explains, she’s constantly making other music, too: ‘I love being in the studio so much, sometimes I have to prize myself out.’ It’s obvious Bailey Rae still lives and breathes music, so I’m surprised when she tells me she regrets not being ‘more prolific’, and not releasing more albums. ‘Failure is a constant partner for me,’ she admits. ‘I feel dissatisfaction with everything I do. For every record I put out, there are three records I didn’t put out because they weren’t right [for whatever reason]. Self-doubt and failure are just part of my life, and I have to overcome them to do anything.’
Her passion for music, she says, began as ‘a way of unfolding a different part of my personality’. Born in suburban Leeds, she was raised by her ‘white working-class’ mother and Kittitian father on a musical diet of American soul music, funk 45s and R&B. While her parents divorced when she was in middle school, she describes a ‘fun and structured’ childhood shared with her two younger sisters, Candice and Rhea, filled with violin lessons, ballet classes and singing in church. But Bailey Rae ‘found her thing’ when she discovered the rock bands Nirvana, L7 and Veruca Salt in secondary school. She became enveloped in the booming indie scene, fronting a ‘noisy, aggressive’ girl band when she was just 15. Indie music felt like home because it welcomed ‘outsiders’, and she revelled in being ‘the only Black girl in the mosh pit’.
She went on to study English at the University of Leeds, but it was a part-time job in the cloakroom of a jazz club that became her biggest education. Between studying and trying to get her indie band signed, she’d ‘sneak down to the club’, watch gigs and
play at night. ‘That was the first time I met people who had music as their life,’ she says. ‘I thought, “Oh, you actually can be a musician and earn a living; you don’t have to [have another job] and do it on the weekends.”’
It was at the jazz club where Bailey Rae met celebrated saxophonist Jason Rae (she says they fell in love ‘on first meeting’), who supported her in embarking on a solo career. Soon enough, her songwriting and sultry vocals garnered attention and she found fame with her now renowned debut single Like A Star, followed by Put Your Records On. She describes the thrill of playing sold-out gigs with crowds singing her lyrics back to her as ‘feeling like flying’. But she also remembers the swarms of camera phones she’d be faced with, recalling being pinned against a wall in Topshop to have her photo taken.
I imagine that level of fame must have been tough to adjust to. At first, she explains, not so much. ‘[Journalists] would try to pull me into things like, “So and so said this,” and I’d just be like, “I really like writing songs!”’ she recalls. But when Jason died, things changed. ‘I felt preyed on,’ she says, detailing how journalists would wait outside her house and follow her. ‘I felt quite cross because I hadn’t courted any of that.’
And yet, that was only a minor part of the pain of losing her husband. ‘I remember thinking, “I’ve had a really good run. I’m 29 and I got to have this deep romance. That’s more than a lot of people have, so I’m really lucky,”’ she reflects. ‘But at the same time, I thought, “How am I supposed to survive the stretching decades? How am I going to survive with this actual physical pain?”’
Time, unyielding support from family and friends, and reading books (she cites
The Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, and C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed) played a huge role in helping her move forward. ‘At first, all you can see is the destruction, but then your life grows. New things grow,’ she says. There wasn’t one moment when everything changed, but lots of micro-moments, ‘like sand moving through an hourglass’, where she’d find a sense of ‘newness’ – new confidence, new appreciation for life, new relationships and new friends. ‘At first, I didn’t think I could make any new friends because if they didn’t know Jason, then they wouldn’t know me,’ she muses. ‘I think a big part of losing a partner is realising that you haven’t lost yourself.’ Of course, she adds, grief
doesn’t just stop; it’s a journey that she’s very much still on. ‘You think you’re free of it, and then you might go under again, but those little grains of realisation come all the time.’
One of those realisations was that she could – and would – find love again. Her eyes light up when I mention Brown, who she’d worked with since her debut. ‘It’s so funny when you know someone already – you know their ex-girlfriend, and the one before that, and you know their failings and flaws,’ she smiles. ‘It was very gradual falling in love with him, like the volume being turned up.’ I can tell that, despite the loss of her ‘deep romance’, Bailey Rae remains intoxicated by love. She compares it to surfing, ‘being turned and turned by a wave, breathing in all this water and playing rough and tumble with nature. It’s so heady and overwhelming.’
Now, that deep love extends to her two daughters, whose names and faces she prefers not to share – it’s a ‘feminist thing’, she doesn’t want her career to be defined by her role as a mother. She describes juggling work and family life as ‘a big mush with no boundaries’. The family go on Bailey Rae’s tours together ‘like a big circus’, including her mum, who babysits while Bailey Rae and Brown are working. In fact, they were supposed to tour this summer, with baby in tow, until lockdown put everything on hold. ‘With all things in life, you have these grand worries, but I think having children encourages you to focus on the everyday,’ she says. ‘I’m really grateful to have that focus right now.’
She’s open about that fact that she frets about getting parenting right. She leans on friends with older children for support. ‘They always say, “The thing you’re worrying about now will be completely different to the thing you’re worrying about in six months.”’ But ultimately, she says, it’s a work in progress. ‘We’re constantly tinkering with it. We’re trying to find the right balance. You move this, that thing goes crazy; you move that, this thing goes crazy. But I feel like I’m doing the best job I can.’
As we talk about the highs and lows of motherhood, Bailey Rae reflects on her own experiences growing up, particularly of being mixed race in a predominantly white environment. She tells me that Put Your Records On was a message to her younger self to embrace her natural hair. She didn’t ‘let her hair down’ and learn to love her curls until she started making her music, and cites the straight hair trend of the 1990s as a big reason for that. ‘There was this idea that if you had curly hair, you were making this big statement,’ she recalls. ‘But if you have curly, afro, textured hair, that’s just how it
is naturally. You’re not trying to make yourself bigger, this is just the room you take up.’
Despite feeling her ‘differences’ growing up, fortunately, she says, ‘Racism hasn’t been a defining feature of my life.’ And reading Black female writers such as Toni Morrison, Bell Hooks and Alice Walker helped her define her own sense of self. ‘They gave a framework and reassurance that, to me, was saying, “Don’t allow people to put you in a box because of your skin colour. Continue to expand in all the ways you dream of, and know instinctively to be yourself,”’ she says.
Unsurprisingly, the death of George Floyd and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests had a profound impact on her. Bailey Rae avoided posting anything explicit about police brutality online because she didn’t want to add to the trauma many Black people experience when they’re confronted with reminders that ‘a big fundamental part of me is despised by a big group of people’. It’s clear that she feels this trauma deeply, too. ‘Black Lives Matter is such a poignant statement for me because it’s so humble and entry-level,’ she says. ‘The idea of mattering, or counting. It’s strange how people find ways to disagree with that statement.’
Still, in true Bailey Rae style, she’s optimistic and believes that change is afoot. She describes the protests as a ‘beautiful thing’, and thinks it’s ‘encouraging’ that conversations about racism and police brutality aren’t just happening within ‘Black spaces’ any more. ‘My dream is that this never happens again,’ she says, pausing to think. ‘I mean, I don’t think it’s unrealistic to want a world that is completely free of violence. That’s my bigger hope.’
As talk turns to post-lockdown life, the sun peeks through the clouds. Bailey Rae raves animatedly about her love of attending gigs, and tells me a hilarious story about having a toastie made by a ‘naked guy with a beard’ at Glastonbury. As we laugh, I feel warmer, as if I’m lying on the grass in my parents’ garden once more. I feel hopeful that, despite the world being in a state of change and uncertainty, the sun will shine again and the future is brimming with the possibility for growth. And it turns out this idea is almost a mantra for Bailey Rae. ‘Hope has been a big feature in my life,’ she smiles.
‘If you don’t have hope, you don’t have anything.’