Corinne Bailey Rae Shines As a Storyteller in Black Rainbows

Interview and photos by Mary Perez

Graphic by Rebekah Witt

For many, a debut record is just that: an introduction to one’s discography, a welcome to the music industry. But for Corinne Bailey Rae, her self-titled debut album shot the English singer-songwriter into the spotlight, specifically the success of her breakout single “Put Your Records On.” A world-renowned artist whose works have earned two Grammys and two Mercury Prize nominations, she most recently released Black Rainbows in 2023, her first album in seven years. The genre-bending record was inspired by Bailey Rae’s experience at Chicago’s Stony Island Arts Bank, drawing influences from stories of Ed J. Williams’ curated collection of Black archival objects. I sat down with Corinne Bailey Rae ahead of her performance at San Francisco’s Outside Lands Music Festival to discuss her latest release, upcoming shows, and advice for budding musicians:

You're playing Outside Lands today, so is there anything that you're excited to do? What are you looking forward to in your set?

I always love a festival set. You don't have long, and you've got to prove yourself to people. You know, I always explain to people who either haven't kept what you do or are just kind of curious, and you get to pull people in. So a festival is always a big challenge for me. I love seeing the audience get thicker and thicker as the show goes on. It's not like my shows can be two hours long, so you've got to hit it, right? So, yeah, mostly just really looking forward to performing. 

Is there anyone you're hoping to catch while you're here?

I like to catch CMAT’s set, but it's just before ours. She and I have just been nominated for the Mercury Prize, a big prize in the UK. I've seen her sing a few songs, but not a whole set. 

You've already played quite a few festivals over your career, but is there any festival that you really want to play? What’s your dream festival to perform at? 

That's a really good question. I mean, I've got to play at Glastonbury, which I love. Got to play at Coachella, which I really loved. You know, Lollapalooza is such a classic American festival, like Burning Man. I’ve heard so many stories about those two festivals, but especially Burning Man, just kind of the mystery and strangeness of it. Yeah, people aren't trading with money; you have to bring things to swap with. It just seems like a real trip; I'd like to be around that. 

Definitely! You're talking about how these sets are a lot shorter, and you have to get people there and really keep them hooked. Do you have trouble putting together the set list and deciding what you want to play? 

I have a lot of kind of slow, intimate songs that require a lot of silence in the background. I also have some songs that are punk songs and playful songs, so we're doing more of that at this than we would in my own show. I think we are gonna play one really intimate song, and I think I'll just have to deal with the bleed from the other stages. 

Your latest album came out last year, so how was the fan reaction compared to your expectations? Were there any songs that they latched on to that you were surprised by?

I think it was great to play something really different. The whole record, for me, was an experiment. It was all in response to this art archive in Chicago, so it's mostly sort of African American history, art, politics, literature, dance, music, and fashion. You know, I just went to this building as a tourist, and then when I left, I found myself writing songs in response to these objects I saw, like every copy of Ebony Magazine made. We have these difficult and problematic objects from America's past that were collected by this Black and Chinese banker called Ed J. Williams to take them out of circulation. It was amazing for me to be inspired into music by these kinds of old bits of history that felt like they were fizzing with life. There were slides, and they were photographs or letters or objects for the home. So I think, for me, it really opened me up musically. I always thought was gonna be a side project, so I didn't put my name on it. I never put my name on it. John, the guy who did the artwork, accidentally put my name, but I really, really like the look of it and decided to claim it as my baby. But I've been really thrilled by the reaction to it because looking at the people who followed my music, they're really up for it. Going in all these different directions, lots of people, all sorts of genres, I’ve really enjoyed that.

For sure. You're playing around with a lot of different stories on this. Did you have any trouble deciding what was it gonna sound like and what you were gonna speak about?

I felt like the sound of it was really dictated by the objects. It was really sort of instant, kind of visceral response. You know, I saw this photograph of this 17-year-old beauty queen, this Black girl, Audrey Smaltz, who was 17 in 1954, so I worked out that she'd be in her 80s now. When I saw it, it really reminded me of those riot grrrl posters from the '90s that were sort of reused 50s, kind of cheesecake images, and subverted them. Straight away, it just came as a sort of riot grrrl, sort of go group, clapping hands, kind of bump song. With every single piece of music, each object sort of suggested the sound of it. There was no head-scratching at all with this record, which is really nice because I didn't feel like it could be done in many different ways. It just felt very directional.

You said that you didn't expect to come in and be inspired by it. Do you think that's something you're gonna do in the future, explore different places and write about things that you see or things that you feel while you're there? 

Absolutely, I just think it's really good to kind of let all the things that really interest you and drive you into music. When you first start out, you can sing about your early life or your relationships. I guess, as you get on in different records, you have different things to say and more things to say and you're inspired by the things. People would say to me, “Who are you listening to?” I feel like that's not necessarily where I get inspiration, listening to bands like I'd get more out of looking at a painting or finding African art that's 700 years old. Objects or events or people's friendships or behaviors, those are things that stop talking to me in terms of sound-making more than other people's songs. I think I'm still a big music fan, but when I hear something brilliant, I think, “Oh, I love that.” But I don't think I'd like to do something the same; if anything, I think, “Oh, now I've got to stay away from that. I don't want everyone to think it's trying to sound like this or that.” You can close down avenues listening to sort of contemporary music.

Are there any other different things that you're inspired by other than artwork itself? 

I mean, I feel like there's so much. There's so much classical music that I don't know. I started playing music as a child; I started playing violin, but there's a bunch of Tchaikovsky and Bartok and Chopin that have such incredible sort of harmonic moves. I think I'm interested in sort of expanding my harmonic and textural power. 

That’d be cool to do a symphony-backed show for you.

I'd love to do that. I was really lucky to play when we were in Amsterdam at the North Sea Jazz Festival. This year, we did our own set, but the year before, I played with the Philharmonic for just one song. But it was amazing to get to do that. It was the first song from the record, “A Spell, A Prayer.” In the rehearsal, he asked me, “How was it? How's the arrangement?” They would listen to record and reinterpret it, and I just burst into tears. Yeah, I was so sort of moved by not just the arrangement and the scale of it but just how many people are involved in kind of executing it. It's really humbling to see whatever it was, 70 people I didn't know, sort of making my song with me. It was very, very moving, and I cried, really, really sobbing, kind of hard-to-recover-from cries. Yeah, it was amazing.

That sounds amazing. You've been writing for 20+ years now, so how has your songwriting process evolved since then? Are there any lessons that you've learned along the way that you’ve incorporated into this newer album and upcoming works? 

I think I'm learning more freedom. At the beginning, I always had loads of freedom. You know, at 17, I was in a band, nobody cared what I did. I had no reputation, so it could just be sort of anything that came into my head. I definitely felt, with my third record, a kind of massive pressure to make a certain kind of thing, that people were happy. In terms of industry, just thinking about people at the record label, I knew how it worked. If you do well, they get a raise, they get a promotion. If you don't do well, they get fired. So if you're a sensitive person, that kind of pressure puts a lot on you. I learned a lot about freedom from this record, and I really want to carry that into everything I do now. Just have to let it blow, have to be happy with it. If it's too difficult, maybe just do something else, move sideways. 

After this weekend, you're gonna play some other shows internationally. Are there any places that you're excited to play? What should fans expect from those sets? 

Well, we're playing in Amsterdam and Antwerp and playing a bunch of UK festivals, and then we're going to China for a five-show tour. I've never toured in China before. I've played a Shanghai festival and a Beijing festival. I’ve never actually been to countries, like flying in, having time, looking around, so I'm really excited to do that. Yeah, it's always amazing to be in a different place and try new foods and buy textiles and all of that stuff. 

Earlier this year, you had your residency at the Blue Note Club in Manhattan. What was it to play in such a historical venue and pack it with all your fans? 

It was amazing to do that. I know it is such a historic venue. When I got on stage each night, I'd say, “I saw Gil Scott-Heron play in this venue,” and it was just such a trip to be like, “Oh, we're on the same stage.” This venue has been around for so long. You know, that album really kind of rocks out in places. In some places, it felt strange to be in a jazz venue doing that music, and also in quite an intimate place. I was doing a residency at Columbia University, and a lot of the professors came, and I felt really good to be able to put across what I was actually doing, sort of tell them the story off the record. Of course, there were lots of times that were intimate. I could talk about the songs and the stories behind them. I've really enjoyed that on this record because it's about other people's stories, not my own, so it feels good to be able to share the life of Harriet Jacobs or Audrey Smaltz or any of those characters and people that I've come across in this music and this research. So, the festivals I'm looking forward to playing are sort of newer places for me, and I'm really hoping to keep all this feeling of freedom with me. 

It's good that you're able to educate people on these stories because otherwise, they wouldn't know about them. They wouldn't come across it unless they also visited the same places. 

I mean, in some cases, some of these stories were so well-known at the time, like Harriet Jacobs was a really well-selling author, really celebrated at the time. But her story fell out of circulation because it started to be doubted. She was an enslaved woman. Was it really her who wrote this literary work, or was it maybe the editor who wrote it? Did she really hide out in that laugh for seven years on the plantation? Could she have done that? It was only the work of another academic from Yale, who was able to sort of cross-reference all the stuff in the biography to show this really is a true story and needs to be taught.

Wow, that’s amazing. You've achieved so much in the past 20 years, so what were your goals when you first became an artist versus your goals now? Is there anything you're still hoping to achieve? 

I feel like I didn't really have specific goals. I mean, I really want to get signed. I remember I wanted my band to get signed; it was my two best girlfriends and my boyfriend at the time, and that was the aim, just to be doing music as a job. I was really happy to sort of get to do that, and that's still my goal, to sort of keep this job. You have to connect with people, and of course, that's my hope, to continue to connect with people enough so that it carries on being my job. That's really my aim. And, of course, I want to make really good songs. That's the thing I mostly want to do. Every single time, I'm sitting down like, “I want this to be great.” Failing to achieve what you want sort of drives you to just keep closing that gap, or keep coming back for more.

For sure. Were there ever any moments where you looked back and were like, “Wow, I made it, I finally did it, I achieved this?”

I don't know if I've ever looked back so much like that. I mean, I'm really happy to still be doing music, but yeah, I feel like I've still got a lot to say and prove. I feel really future-focused, I guess. Yeah, I think I'm just like that as a person as well, really future-focused.

Do you have any advice for young songwriters, especially non-men, and people of color?

I think the main thing is that people really want to hear your voice. I love it when songwriters really sound like they're using their unique voice, whether it's weird terms of phrase, a melody that doesn't quite make sense, or really the dumb and weird stuff from their life. I just feel like songwriters need to have the confidence to just sort of know that everything they feel and think sort of has been felt and thought before and that the skill of the songwriter is to put that into poetry and have other people think, “Oh, yeah, that's me,” instead of thinking “Maybe this is too weird,” or “It's not universal enough” or “It's too niche.” I just feel like, when you really hear a song by a sort of 22-year-old woman that isn't just also written by three 45-year-old men alongside you saying, “Oh, you can't say that. Oh, it’d be better if you said it like this,” actually, really hearing the voices of young women and young people of color is so valued. We see loads of female artists, but I think in the UK, it's only like 11% of the songs are actually written by women. So many women are allowed through the door, as long as they have this kind of male songwriting too. So just believe, believe in the ones you came up with yourself.

Any last notes that you want to share with your fans?

I'm so grateful to still have this job.

After our chat, I later stopped by the Sutro stage to catch the latter half of her performance. As the crowds gathered around the stage, whether it be casually lounging on blankets on the hill or standing right against the barricade, everyone was entranced by Bailey Rae’s moving set. Ending with “Put Your Records On,” fans sang and clapped along as she played the tambourine to the 2006 hit. Over her 20+ years in the industry, there is nowhere else but up for Bailey Rae, and it’s an honor to be there along the way.

Be sure to listen to Black Rainbows, available on all streaming platforms!