British singer/songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae is back on the music scene with “The Sea,” the follow-up to her platinum, self-titled debut album. The Grammy award winner makes her return in the midst of a continuous healing process she has endured since the death of her husband, Jason Rae, in 2008.
Corinne has only just begun to publicly reveal details about her grieving process and how it has affected her music.
“There are other people that have had these similar experiences … all different kinds of loss, and I feel like a lot of people don’t really sing about it in popular music,” Rae said in a recent interview. “I want to be that one voice that is saying that this is also a human experience that is worth making music about.”
Corinne achieved both critical and commercial success after the release of “Corinne Bailey Rae” in 2006. While her most popular song to date, “Put Your Records On,” climbed the charts, she seemed to define the word ‘free,’ bicycling her way through the video like an unburdened dreamer.
Nearly four years later, Corinne is singing a different tune. Although “The Sea” is not entirely devoted to despair, the singer has been using the project to help her cope with grief and redefine life. “Part of that … experience is you can’t imagine a future. Your imagined future is totally on fire,” Rae has said. Perhaps Corinne needs to hear the same soothing words that a talented young singer from Leeds, England sang to us back in 2006: “You’re gonna find yourself somewhere, somehow.”
Written by Shaira Brereton
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