“I wanted to do something really different to anything I’ve done before. Why did it start that way? And when did it become clear that it was actually the next Corinne Bailey Rae album? They never quite made it big, but before this interview begins, Bailey Rae says she can still remember the “sheer excitement” of seeing their first NME mention. Bailey Rae has always had range: she began her career in the late ’90s as frontwoman of briefly buzzy indie band Helen. Her third LP, 2016’s ‘The Heart Speaks In Whispers’, was another accomplished set on which she embraced blissful folk-soul and balmy alt-R&B. Then in 2010, Bailey Rae earned a Mercury Prize nomination for her deeply poignant second album, ‘The Sea’, which was written in the wake of her husband’s death. The latter, which was turned into a TikTok hit in 2020 by American indie artist Ritt Momney, remains an enduringly lovely summer anthem. Released in 2006, her eponymous debut went triple-platinum in the UK after spawning the Grammy-nominated pop-soul bops ‘Like A Star’ and ‘Put Your Records On’. What she’s done before, of course, is consistently impressive. “I didn’t want to feel any weight of expectation in relation to what I’ve done before,” the Leeds-based singer-songwriter says when we meet in central London. “I just felt very free in terms of how I could use my voice and what the music could sound like,” she tells NME.īy design, ‘Black Rainbows’ is quite unlike any other Corinne Bailey Rae album. One minute she’s chanting over punky guitar riffs on the thrilling single ‘New York Transit Queen’, the next she’s singing with bell-like clarity on the sublime piano ballad ‘Peach Velvet Sky’. Inspired by multiple revelatory visits to Chicago’s Stony Island Arts Bank, a Black art and culture hub that Bailey Rae calls her “second home”, it’s a bold and unselfconscious collection that defies categorisation. Corinne Bailey Rae‘s new album, ‘Black Rainbows’, is a fascinating tour de force.
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