Corinne Bailey Rae: The rebirth of a British R&B icon
Mention the name Corinne Bailey Rae to anybody of a certain age, and they will invariably have ‘Put Your Records On’ lodged in their minds for days to come. That was the song that first established the Leeds-born vocalist and songwriter in the musical mainstream of the United Kingdom. Throughout the 2000s, Rae helped to establish the sounds of modern R&B music, offering a refreshing alternative from the oversaturation of guitar-led indie bands dominating the airwaves at the time. However, following a record as hugely successful as ‘Put Your Records On’ was never going to be an easy task.
In the very early days of Bailey Rae, she had been a member of the all-female Leeds indie rock outfit Helen, who became pretty notable within the local music scene in West Yorkshire. Had that band continued along their path, perhaps Rae would have pursued an entirely different sound throughout her career. As it turns out, though, the band split up in 1998 after the bassist became pregnant and Rae chose to embrace her more soulful influences.
This newfound direction for the songwriter, along with her marriage to Jason Rae in 2001, fostered an incredibly stylish, romantic R&B style for Rae, which culminated in her smash hit ‘Put Your Records On’. This seminal track established the Leeds singer as an R&B star on a national and even international scale, as well as inspiring the success of her eponymous debut album in 2006. After such an intense level of success, you could forgive Rae if she decided to stick closely to the sound of those initial hits, rooting herself in one sound and rarely deviating.
To her credit, though, Rae chose not to do this. Her subsequent albums, particularly 2010’s The Sea, developed upon the sounds of her early material, imbuing her work with much heavier soul influences while retaining the pop potential that she had achieved back in the mid-2000s. Although these records marked a development in her sound, they were not worlds apart from the R&B styling which first gave Bailey Rae her name. The quality of the material never dropped, but audiences were yearning for something a little different from the songwriter.
That brings us to 2023. It had been seven years since a Corinne Bailey Rae album had graced the airwaves, and, ultimately, she had largely fallen from the consciousness of the musical mainstream. Upon the announcement of a brand-new record entitled Black Rainbows, most listeners expected another gentle, melodic R&B record from one of Britain’s most endearing vocalists. Instead, Rae delivered a blistering sonic journey that touched upon everything from free jazz to fuzzy garage punk, completely reinventing herself and the perceptions of her work.
Rae had always done things by her own desire, refusing to bow down to the pressures of the music industry or churn out chart-pleasing R&B songs, and Black Rainbows is a fantastic example of this in practice. If you were to play ‘Put Your Records On’ and ‘Erasure’ back-to-back, you would never imagine they were written by the same artist. It is that development that distinguishes between a good musician and a great artist; the fearlessness of reinvention was not something that worried the Leeds native.
Joe Strummer once said, “You’ve got to have some music that you feel like”, in other words, true music should be a reflection of the emotions felt by the artist. Seemingly, after all the political unrest, disenfranchisement, and austerity of the late 2010s into the present day, Bailey Rae simply did not feel right creating an upbeat, lovey-dovey R&B record, because those were not the emotions she was facing at the time.
Although Black Rainbows features its fair share of slow, atmospheric jazz and soul numbers, it also features a great deal of anger, and joy in the face of oppression. Songs like ‘Erasure’ and ‘New York Transit Queen’ are some of the greatest garage rock tracks to be released in recent years, and the fact that they came from the mind of a singer known in the mainstream for gentle R&B tracks makes them all the more infectious.
Throughout musical history, the greatest artists have been those who have dared to reinvent themselves. Blazing a trail into new avenues and sounds is a risk that might not pay off for some, but it speaks to an unwavering commitment to artistry and innovation. This new era of Corinne Bailey Rae signifies that fact more so than most other modern artists and Black Rainbows is undoubtedly her magnum opus.
