Current Favorite: A Closer Look Corrine Bailey Rae's The Sea

By Quela

The first time I heard her was at a family gathering at my Great Aunt’s house on Thanksgiving. The sound that met my ears was so unlike the usual jazz that I had come to expect at these family functions that I had to listen. I soon found myself obsessed with the CD case, skipping to number 7, and then to 12, then back to track 4. I read all the lyrics in the case, which were followed by a small print that told me that each song was written and co produced by a Corrine Bailey Rae. Her self-titled album ended up under our Christmas tree that year. A gift from me to my mother with my handwriting reading to: Mom from:Santa, but as it sometimes and often happens this gift was really for the both of us.

Corrine Bailey Rae’s voice is still part of a grand routine in my life back home. I get dressed to “Put Your Records On”, style my hair to “’Till It Happens To You” and fall asleep with head phones planted in my ears as she sings “Seasons Change”. Her recollections of her childhood and past loves made my 13 year old mind wander, drawing images to match the sounds, constructing my own music videos to the things I was hearing. Her guitar strums never failed to put me in a good mood.

Corrine Bailey Rae’s second album, titled The Sea was released January of this year and it was in our CD player in no time. When I heard It I knew there was something different. It sounded... patient. It was an album that took time. I came to find that she started writing it in 2007 and went on to record it towards the end of that year. She continued to do more work on it up until March of 2008, took a break and finally came back to it in 2009. Quite a process.

The shadow of her husband’s passing in 2008 was somehow apparent in every song. It was slower, and much, much more personal, painful. I am careful not to call this grieving as I write. It would be more appropriate to categorize this album with understanding and closure. She speaks of the emotion love in a more mature way then I have heard other artists speak of it. The way I hear it, love in an emotional understanding is something that happens to you and something that you lose. But love as your partner is as lost as an angel, in that he is never too far away as I understood in her song “I Would Like To Call It Beauty”.

“So young for death,

We walk in shoes too big

But you play it like a poet,

Like you always did.

And I lay face upturned on the palm of God,

Pushed on by the fingertips of dreams,

They haunted me,

Consoling me.”

I came to see truly how much pain can inspire such beauty in the song “I’d do it all again”. I saw a new take on the common comparison between love and drugs, the substance of the song being that she lost the love of her life, her husband to a drug overdose.

“Ooh, you're searching for something I know, wont make you happy


Ooh, you're thirsting for something I know, wont make you happy


Ooh, you did it all again, you broke another skin


Its hard to believe this time, hard to believe


That my heart, my hearts an open door... You got all you came for, baby.”

Corinne Bailey Rae is counted among my favorite artists because she has done exactly what I expect from great artists. She has made it known that she is able to take the ugliest feelings and transform them into a universal beauty that everyone can appreciate.