The ideal track a musician’s career takes is this: They release their first album. It goes Platinum in five different countries, breaks the top 10 on eleven different charts around the world, accumulates three Grammy nominations, and produces five singles. The next step is to tour, then go back to the studio to make another record, better than the one before. Corrine Bailey Rae was on that track until March 22 2008 when Jason Rae, Corrine Bailey Rae’s husband, was found dead of an apparent overdose.
Bailey Rae was born to a West Indies father and a Yorkshire mother. The oldest of three girls, Bailey Rae started singing in her local “…regular brethren church, very middle-class.” It was here that she started playing electric guitar - the instrument that overtook the Violin in her musical interests. Her teenage years were spent in Leeds playing with bands on the indie-rock side of the musical spectrum. She became disillusioned, went to Leeds University to study literature, worked at a Jazz club where she occasionally sang, and started assembling a repertoire of her own tunes. The new tunes had drifted towards the soul side of the musical spectrum.
She was signed to EMI in 2005 and the rest was history. Her star seemed to be soaring, until it all seemed like it could come crashing down. After he husband’s death, Bailey Rae says, “I didn't go anywhere. I didn't write anything. I didn't work. I sat at my kitchen table for a whole year, people came and people went, life drifted by. It was just bleak. Bleak."
After a time, she started working again. Playing small gigs in Leeds, relearning how to perform after life changed. Only after becoming comfortable with performing again did she go back to the studio. The studio she chose was Limefield Studios, a small, intimate studio - the perfect match for her quiet, delicate yet powerful voice.
The Sea is a voyeuristic view into Bailey Rae’s life. The CD starts with “Are You Here” a yearning love song owing equal parts to Marvin Gaye and Radiohead. The track sets the tone for the whole album. It’s murmuring, quiet intro draws the listener in, leading them slowly until the climatic, lush chorus hits.
Bailey Rae, along with producers Steve Chrisanthou (who produced her first album) and Steve Brown, used the form for “Are You Here” throughout the record. Songs have an intimate beginning, leading to chorus that drenches you in sound. The form never really gets old. Each time it happens at what seems to be the perfect moment.
Other tunes, like “The Blackest Lily” – featuring Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson on drums, is a driving rock track with all the trimmings – a solid, yet understated guitar solo, mixed meters in the choruses and just a dash of screaming organs. Yet, under all that is, like most tunes on the record, an undercurrent of pain and sadness.
Like Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear which tells the story of Gaye’s divorce from his first wife, The Sea tells the story of Bailey Rae’s lost love, a love taken from her, a love she still feels deeply.
What is surprising is the most somber track on the record “Love’s On Its Way” is also the most hopeful. Bailey Rae uses her spirituality as a base on which to rebuild her life, saying “When the day comes / And I’ve counted all my sins / How many I’ll see / I was to be able to say that I did more, more than pray.” The song ends with a choir singing “Love’s on its way” in an almost chant like manner.
The masterpiece of the record and title track “The Sea” was written before Jason’s death. The song, written about Bailey Rae’s grandfather who died at sea, is strangely appropriate. Ending with “The sea / The majestic sea / Breaks everything / Crushes everything / Cleans everything / Takes everything / From me” the song could have just as easily been written for Jason. The song flows from section to section with the help of the tasteful string writing. The song, and record, end with the most intimate moment yet - just Bailey Rae’s tender voice, her light auto-harp strumming, and piano rolling chords in its highest register. The music seems to float away like little bits of cotton in the wind.
Bailey Rae was born to a West Indies father and a Yorkshire mother. The oldest of three girls, Bailey Rae started singing in her local “…regular brethren church, very middle-class.” It was here that she started playing electric guitar - the instrument that overtook the Violin in her musical interests. Her teenage years were spent in Leeds playing with bands on the indie-rock side of the musical spectrum. She became disillusioned, went to Leeds University to study literature, worked at a Jazz club where she occasionally sang, and started assembling a repertoire of her own tunes. The new tunes had drifted towards the soul side of the musical spectrum.
She was signed to EMI in 2005 and the rest was history. Her star seemed to be soaring, until it all seemed like it could come crashing down. After he husband’s death, Bailey Rae says, “I didn't go anywhere. I didn't write anything. I didn't work. I sat at my kitchen table for a whole year, people came and people went, life drifted by. It was just bleak. Bleak."
After a time, she started working again. Playing small gigs in Leeds, relearning how to perform after life changed. Only after becoming comfortable with performing again did she go back to the studio. The studio she chose was Limefield Studios, a small, intimate studio - the perfect match for her quiet, delicate yet powerful voice.
The Sea is a voyeuristic view into Bailey Rae’s life. The CD starts with “Are You Here” a yearning love song owing equal parts to Marvin Gaye and Radiohead. The track sets the tone for the whole album. It’s murmuring, quiet intro draws the listener in, leading them slowly until the climatic, lush chorus hits.
Bailey Rae, along with producers Steve Chrisanthou (who produced her first album) and Steve Brown, used the form for “Are You Here” throughout the record. Songs have an intimate beginning, leading to chorus that drenches you in sound. The form never really gets old. Each time it happens at what seems to be the perfect moment.
Other tunes, like “The Blackest Lily” – featuring Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson on drums, is a driving rock track with all the trimmings – a solid, yet understated guitar solo, mixed meters in the choruses and just a dash of screaming organs. Yet, under all that is, like most tunes on the record, an undercurrent of pain and sadness.
Like Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear which tells the story of Gaye’s divorce from his first wife, The Sea tells the story of Bailey Rae’s lost love, a love taken from her, a love she still feels deeply.
What is surprising is the most somber track on the record “Love’s On Its Way” is also the most hopeful. Bailey Rae uses her spirituality as a base on which to rebuild her life, saying “When the day comes / And I’ve counted all my sins / How many I’ll see / I was to be able to say that I did more, more than pray.” The song ends with a choir singing “Love’s on its way” in an almost chant like manner.
The masterpiece of the record and title track “The Sea” was written before Jason’s death. The song, written about Bailey Rae’s grandfather who died at sea, is strangely appropriate. Ending with “The sea / The majestic sea / Breaks everything / Crushes everything / Cleans everything / Takes everything / From me” the song could have just as easily been written for Jason. The song flows from section to section with the help of the tasteful string writing. The song, and record, end with the most intimate moment yet - just Bailey Rae’s tender voice, her light auto-harp strumming, and piano rolling chords in its highest register. The music seems to float away like little bits of cotton in the wind.
