Two-time Grammy winner reflects on hope, music, aging

Sitting in a friend’s backyard in England, musician Corinne Bailey Rae recounts seeing a burned field on a walk through the moors of Yorkshire.

She remembers walking past and saying to a friend, “That is how I feel with my life right now. Everything is destroyed, everything is lost.” And he replied, “Oh, yeah, but we should come back here in a few months, and you’ll just see all of these green shoots.”

That constant renewal of nature is a source of hope for the two-time Grammy winner, who will play the College of Charleston’s Cistern Yard on May 23 as part of the Spoleto Festival USA’s Front Row lineup.

“We’re part of the same cycle, and just where there’s death, there’s life — and just where there’s hopelessness, there’s hope,” Bailey Rae said.

Her music exudes hope. The three-time platinum hit “Put Your Records On” encourages Black women to wear their hair naturally, reminding them, “You’re gonna find yourself somewhere, somehow.” That song, from her self-titled 2006 album, remains a feel-good R&B favorite 19 years later.

“That song was a hit when I was in college,” Spoleto associate producer Leah Hennessy said, adding she thought it was cool to reconnect with an artist down the line and hear how she has grown.

Music rooted in memory and momentum

These days, Bailey Rae’s music sounds a bit different. Her fourth album, 2023’s Black Rainbows, explores the range of the Black experience. Inspired by an exhibit on Black American culture and art at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, the album reveals different facets of Bailey Rae as a musician, from righteous anger in the punk-adjacent song “Erasure” to the Afro-futuristic melodies of “Earthlings.”

“I feel like I’m just getting started in terms of being a songwriter. I just feel like I’ve got more to say, and different things to say and different ways to say it,” said Bailey Rae. “I feel more confident and that I have more authority and that I love it more than I ever have.”

The penultimate track on Black Rainbows, “Peach Velvet Sky,” takes inspiration from Harriet Jacobs’s autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. After escaping enslavement, Jacobs hid in her grandmother’s attic for seven years. “Peach Velvet Sky” imagines what Jacobs might have seen through the cracks in the roof. Performing these songs in Charleston, a city whose history is entangled with the enslavement of millions of people, holds weight for Bailey Rae — especially imagining what it must have felt like to grow up enslaved.

“You grew up with your parents, and you’re aware of their authority. And then over time, you become aware that you’re in this system, it’s impossible for you to get out,” she said. “It must be such a strong coming of age for a child, and so early to sort of understand that the world that you think you know is not actually the real world.”

Still, “Peach Velvet Sky” sees the beauty in the world. “Now in this steel trap place I’ve made, I escape,” sings Bailey Rae, her voice rich with reverence.

Still creating, still evolving

As she reflects on her music now compared to the artist she was 19 years ago, Bailey Rae said she feels lucky to still be creating almost two decades later.

“I feel like I’m the same me that I always was, but I have such wide and vast and deep experiences,” she said. “We don’t talk to young people about how rich life is, and how important experience is — aging is living, you know?”

In 2026, Bailey Rae said she plans to celebrate 20 years since her first record. As for new music, ideas for what comes next are just beginning — at some point, she wants to put out a jazz album — but it’s not knowing that excites her.

“I just never know what’s around the corner, but it’s good to know that you can work, and I’m grateful for that,” Bailey Rae said.

Corinne Bailey Rae will perform at 9 p.m. on May 23 in the College of Charleston’s Cistern Yard.

Ally Watkinson is an arts, style and culture journalism graduate student at Syracuse University.