Corinne Bailey Rae has said she once felt “sad” about the texture of her voice before hearing Billie Holiday and Kurt Cobain, whose music helped her accept it as part of her sound, per music-news.com.
The 47-year-old singer, known for hits including “Put Your Records On” and “Like a Star,” said she was initially uncomfortable with the quality of her singing voice because it had “all this texture”.
Speaking to CBS’ Sunday Morning, she said hearing artists such as Billie Holiday and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain changed her outlook. Their music, she said, showed her that songs did not need to sound “shiny and perfect” for her to belong in music.
She also said she had not expected “Put Your Records On,” her second single, to become such a major success. The track, she added, was recorded in a basement studio with no windows and was made without any sense that it would become a breakout hit.
Bailey Rae’s life changed in 2008 when her husband and bandmate Jason died of an accidental overdose. She later drew on that grief in her second album, The Sea, which dealt with the aftermath of his death and her efforts to come to terms with it.
She said her life now feels divided into two parts, before and after Jason’s death, and described rebirth as a central theme in her work. “There’s a possibility, every single time, of starting again,” she said, adding that people can “hit reset” at any age and return “into the fire” transformed.
Bailey Rae’s comments revisit both the breakthrough success of her early career and the personal loss that shaped her later work, underscoring the themes of identity and renewal that recur in her music.