Put Her Records On

10/12/2007 10:00 PM, LAUNCH
Lyndsey Parker

With her self-titled debut album entering the U.K. charts at number one and her single "Put Your Records On" now a top 20 hit in the U.S., British neo-soul chanteuse Corinne Bailey Rae is one of 2006's surprise stars. And perhaps no one is more surprised than Corinne herself, since it was only a short time ago that she was singing for her supper in a little jazz club in Leeds, England.

This rising soul sensation recently stopped by the Yahoo! Music studios, where she discussed her sudden rise to fame, her humble beginnings, her unexpected musical influences, her impression of America, and one of her very big-name American fans. Read her delightful interview and you'll soon be a Corinne fan too.

YAHOO! MUSIC: OK, let's go way back to the beginning of your musical career. How did you first get into music?

CORINNE: I started at music when I picked up a violin at school, and I spent a long time learning the violin, like maybe eight or nine years. I used to play in orchestras and things like that. But when I got to be a teenager, everyone around me was in bands--you know, we'd had the invasion of bands like Nirvana, L7, Hole, and I was really into Veruca Salt and Belly. I just thought it would be great to be in a band, after coming from classical music where everything was written and you knew how everything was going to happen--to be in a band where you could just make up the music, even make it up as you went along. So I started this band called Helen, a guitar-based band with my two best friends. We played in different places and I started to feel really comfortable being onstage, and I really enjoyed the fact that you could write a song in your room and then just go out and play in front of a hundred people. I learned that sort of art of writing songs that would make people at the back of the club stop talking--how to change a rowdy pub venue into a more mellow atmosphere where people are really listening to you. We used to love bands like Radiohead and Led Zeppelin, and so we had a lot of contrast in the set between loud, aggressive choruses and melancholic, more stripped-back verses. I loved playing that kind of music, and I did that for years.

YAHOO! MUSIC: So how did you go from that kind of music to what you're doing now, which is quite different?

CORINNE: When I was at university, I started working in this jazz and soul club, and just got really influenced by soul music there, like Motown and Stax, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, singers I hadn't really heard before like Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack, and then like the Isley Brothers and funk. It just opened up my mind to the musical universe. It really broadened the kind of music that I liked, and broadened the type of songs that I wrote as well. So when I started writing this album, I really wanted to pull together those two worlds and all that musical experience that I have--to write a record that was soulful, but also had a hint of that sort of guitarist/singer-songwriter thing where you're not trying to entertain people all the time, where you can talk about your true feelings and try to make something that was real and natural-sounding as well.

YAHOO! MUSIC: I understand that you own an important guitar that was given to you by someone special...

CORINNE: Yeah, I used to go to this Baptist church that was quite a sort of middle-class Baptist Church, but it was really different because we had this youth worker there who was really into a guitar bands and really into rock music. I guess it was like the grunge scene that was happening in the mid-'90s, and we were all like teenage rebels as well. And he was really cool. He gave me an electric guitar. When I had just started my band, I couldn't afford it. I'd seen it in the paper and my mom said I couldn't have it; then he bought it and he gave it to me. About two years ago, I finally paid him back. It was great to have an instrument to play on. I played it through my home stereo, and annoyed our neighbor--he was a taxi driver who used to work nights, so he was like, "Keep it down, I'm trying to sleep!" We used to rehearse in my living room. And yeah, I loved playing guitar, and I loved the fact that I got my first guitar through church--you know, it was quite an alternate sort of church, not so bothered about what music was spiritual, what music was secular, so it was a good introduction into songwriting with that stuff, the more irreverent side of songwriting.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Would you say that your church experience affects your songwriting now?

CORINNE: I think there's a spiritual aspect to all music. It's kind of like the frequency of what's inside you, and I especially love music that can sort of point its finger on a hurt or a feeling that you didn't know you had. Loads of times I just sit down and listen to something, suddenly the music sort of goes deep, it hurts there. And that's the kind of music I wanted to write, something that was like that, but a bit healing as well. I think music can be really spiritual in that way. In all different ways, you can have music that's spiritual in a sense, that just lifts you up, or music that gives you sort of an edgy outlook, an output for your aggression. I think all music is something that kind of comes from nowhere--it's magical, and lots of great songwriters will always say, "I don't know where this song came from." So I definitely think music has got a weird, special, un-quantifiable thing about it.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Tell me a bit more about this jazz club you worked in.

CORINNE: Well, I used to work in the cloak room at first, then in the bar, and then on the tables in the restaurant. I had do all these different jobs. There used to be bands playing there in the afternoon, and when it was really quiet, they used to let me come out from behind the bar and go sing with the band. And on my days off I used to go there as well, so sometimes there'd be a straightahead jazz band playing Miles Davis and Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, and then they'd get me up and get me to sing "God Bless The Child" or something. And then another day there would be a soul band playing Bill Withers and Al Green and Marvin Gaye. So it was a really varied musical experience, and it sort of kept me on my toes. It was nice to be invited into this community of people who were really musical and really humble, who kind of let me have a chance. I just think it's good when people aren't so precious about things and they kind of let you into their world. So it started to be that people would come and watch me, and then I got my own date as well; I had a little band called Sugar Brew. We used to play Jimi Hendrix and Curtis Mayfield songs, great soulful stuff that was kind of guitar-led and had that psychedelic blues side that I love in music. So it was a really good experience to play with people who let you into that world.

YAHOO! MUSIC: How long did this go on before you got a record deal?

CORINNE: I stopped working just like three or four years ago. After I finished in the university, I stayed working in the bar, and I also worked in a department store, and I also worked as a waitress, so I had loads of different part-time jobs that I was always juggling. I also worked a little bit doing soul covers in Sugar Brew, playing in small venues. So yeah, it was only in the last few years, really, that I've been able to concentrate on music fully and start writing on my own independently, and start hoping that I'd have an album come out. All of those are newer aspirations.

YAHOO! MUSIC: So all the success you've had recently must be tripping you out!

CORINNE: Yeah, it's crazy to me that everything has happened so fast. I was actually finishing the record in December last year, and now I'm here in America, playing to people in L.A. and Chicago and New York, and I've toured Europe, playing in Italy and France and Germany and Belgium, all these places. Then we played loads in England, and it's really a mad to see how quick it's taken on. It's weird and exciting, what I've always wanted, and just a hard thing to sort of take in.

YAHOO! MUSIC: How did your music career take off, exactly? Like, what was your big break?

CORINNE: I think it was really good to get to be on U.K. television with this program called Later With Jools Holland, a really influential music show. It's a really diverse show: It goes around in a circle with all different bands, so you might get Jamie Foxx with his latest thing, but you also get a new singer-songwriter who plays the harp, and then you'll get like a West-African band with two blind people playing guitars, and then you get a lot of latest American rock bands, then some indie kids from London. It's a real mixture, and it gives equal status as to all these different bands--it's all just regarded as music, and all the other people watch everyone else. I like the fact that everything's not so segregated in a show, like "this is black music" or "this is white music," "this is popular" or "this is alternative." They're just all in there. I was got on the show in October 2005, and that's when a lot more interest started happening. Then the record came out in England in February, so it's been a mad few months so far.

YAHOO! MUSIC: How are you staying grounded when all of a sudden you're a huge star?

CORINNE: Well, I didn't expect it at all! I didn't expect the album to take off the way it has, and I'm totally overjoyed about it after being a bit more of an underground thing. I was perfectly happy to be like performing underground--you know, that is really valid too. So I think I just feel exactly the same, because partly I'm really busy, and also because you can never really see yourself from the outside.

YAHOO! MUSIC: You've toured America a lot now. What do you think of the U.S. so far?

CORINNE: Well, that's a big question, 'cause American culture's so popular--obviously worldwide it's a dominant culture, and I think in Britain we're really aware of America and the politics and the comedy and obviously the music. And I think if you're interested in soul music, America is obviously the home of soul music, so it's really interesting to come here knowing what I do about America and experiencing all the different places. It's a really interesting and hopeful place, and I think certain cities like New York feel like really hopeful places where people try to make a new start for themselves. I think it is a real energy-enhancer. I like the fact that there's people from all over the world, open to these different amazing experiences. There's no such thing as a "typical American," and America can therefore be a really powerful place for a change.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Is it very important for you to repeat your U.K. success in America? Is that your goal?

CORINNE: I don't really have a goal to be successful here. I mean, I'm still just playing to 500 people here. In my heart I'm not thinking, "Oh, I'd really like to be like a massive star!" I never felt like that anyway. You know, I just did the BET Awards ceremony, and no one had heard of me at all. It was like, "Corinne who?" But I sort of like that in a way. I wouldn't like to be so well-known that I couldn't really do normal things. Aspirations are great, but I'd just love to write some really good songs that stay around for ages, and I'd love to do some shows where people in the audience will think, "Oh, I'll remember that for the rest of my life." So all my hopes are creative ones, and ones I'll have to work on myself, rather than thinking, "I'd like to be big here and big there and win this and get this many records." I don't know honestly if that's a consideration, but it's other people's job to worry about that side of it, the marketing and all that.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Speaking of memorable gigs, is it true Prince was at your show last night?

CORINNE: Yeah! I was told that he'd rung up the venue, and I was like, "Oh, think he'll come?" And my manager said, "No, I think he's busy till 11." So I didn't think anything of it, and then when I got offstage, my tour manager said to my manager, "Well, are you gonna tell her?" And they told me Prince came. I was like, "Are you joking?" Something like that's just mad, because it's not like anyone invited him to come; he just thought, "I've heard of you and I'd like to see you." Things like that are just surreal, that someone I really admire musically can hear a musicality in what I do. I like to make kind of music that other musicians can appreciate--that's an aim of mine--so I was really pleased that he came. I did actually tell all my friends when we got home. They were asleep, you know, with the time difference, so I got loads of text messages back after I'd been asleep this morning.

YAHOO! MUSIC: The press has likened you to artists like Billie Holiday and Norah Jones. What do you think of these comparisons?

CORINNE: I think the comparisons you get, they're all meant as a compliment, but I think it can be a bit of a double-edged sword. Being compared to really amazing, iconic figures means that there's a whole bunch of people who will be very quick to tell you that no, you're actually not the new Billie Holiday! You find it's just different journalists kind of arguing their opinions between themselves. And you're like, "Fine, just do it over there and don't try to involve me!" I think when you're a new artist it's natural that you're going to be compared to so-and-so, and you always hope that eventually people will start to recognize you for your own voice. Certainly at this stage I won't be trying to hold myself up to all these like massive stars, so I feel like it's a compliment but I admit I feel a bit uncomfortable.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Can you talk about the message of your single "Put Your Records On"?

CORINNE: For me, "Put Your Records On" has a lot to with finding your identity. So on the one hand I think it's about not being afraid to be different and to look different and to think differently to everyone else--like the bit in the video where everyone's kind of driving off in that direction and I'm just kind of going off on my own. It's just saying that it's OK to do your own thing, and I wish that was something someone had said to me when I was a lot younger--that it's kind of OK not to fit in and that no one really does fit in, and that when you try to be like this group over here, you'll never catch up with them. So I think it's about being different. It's also about finding your identity in music, which I feel I did when I was a teenager, since there were certain bands that I could sort of pick that were "mine," you know? Veruca Salt and Belly meant a lot to me when I was a teenager, finding this kind of niche music that was indie, and was a bit kooky, and was for people who looked different and didn't wear fashionable clothes and didn't look like the traditional expectation of like what a pretty girl would look like. I really liked finding those artists and seeing with someone like Courtney Love in Hole, wearing this babydoll dress and a tiara that's skewed and makeup that's a total disaster. That was such a powerful image of femininity which I hadn't seen before. It wasn't all like, " I want everyone to fancy me," it was like "Here I am, I do my own thing." It didn't have to do with the male gaze and wanting people to appreciate you. So I feel like I've found a lot of that in music, and I was kind of saying in the song, you know, "Find, find those singers, find those bands that you can put on, and then they're like your world." So yeah, it's just about finding your identity, and appreciating music as well.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Do you think that kind of female philosophy is missing in pop music today?

CORINNE: Actually, I do think it's becoming more popular for women to just be doing music for the sake of doing music; it's not like, "Oh, what does she look like?" Or at least there's a bit of a wider range of how you're allowed to look these days. Like K.T. Tunstall--she's got braces [suspenders], she's got her trousers, and she's just playing the guitar, and she looks like any of those sort of powerful rock guitarists. I think that's important. I mean we have Chrissie Hynde, who I think is really influential amongst women, but yeah, I think sometimes when there's a female band try to make it fetishized, like they've got really short skirts. I don't know of when will people ever tire of that particular image, maybe never! But I think it kind of goes in circles, and I hope that there will be just more and more female who feel like really comfortable just being themselves. I also think if you are a female artist, it's important to kind of appreciate other people and not to be really competitive. I think there's like a really competitive spirit sometimes between female artists, like there's only enough room for three female singer-songwriters in one particular moment. And it's not true, it's just a myth! So I think if everyone appreciates each other all the more, then there'd be more women coming through.

YAHOO! MUSIC: There are love songs on your album that are quite dark. Are they autobiographical in nature, or what is your inspiration for them?

CORINNE: They're from my own experience, different relationships I've had. I've kind of taken fragments of different things and put them into stories, so it's not just like a page-written-from-a-diary kind of thing. But I have felt all those things, like I have felt hope, and I have felt loss, and I have felt anxiety, but I also felt a lot of joy as well. So they're all in there. I just wanted to write something that was a bit more honest about love. I think most of love songs are too black-and-white, but I think there's an area in between where you're really working on something and you kind of unsure about it and whether it's gonna work out. lot of people find themselves in those sort of situations, and I wanted to try it a little bit about that.