Corrine Bailey Rae albums

2023

Black Rainbows - 93%

Whatever Corinne Bailey Rae was before this, her R&B has mixed with the rock music world in an unpredictable way and created some kind of bizarre step forward. There is soul, but that soul has been changed dramatically. By looking back and trying to make sense of her people’s history, she has made something tries to paint a better picture of how we can all proceed as humans and still survive all the horrors and craziness all around us. This album is one of the best attempts on one of music’s ultimate conundrums: how you balance an album with rockers (fast songs) and ballads (slow songs). Not being content the ride the pop charts, she has chosen to use her previous fame to make more challenging music. One of the most dramatic shifts in approach I have ever seen- for reference check her 2006 hit, “Put your Records On.”

The songs that rock on here truly do- "NY Transit Queen" is some blistering punk rock stuff and tons of fun and I wish was a bit longer, while "Erasure" is a more angry but balanced approach- anger channeled at the African American struggle throughout history. I’ll admit these are the songs that truly drew me in at first and are right up my alley, but there is so much to admire on the album. These songs are entertained by what is an R&B album at heart, but its one full of many surprises: the seductive quality of "Red Horse", the recitation of pride at the end of "He Will Follow You Home", the keyboard randomness of the alien sounding “Earthlings”. “Black Rainbows” is a bold choice as the second song on the album, testing the listeners patience but also so brief and wonderful. Bailey Rae somehow balances this all and manages to sum it up twice towards the end of the album, the Epic soul ballad of "Put it Down" and the more psych influenced closer “Before the Throne of the Invisible God”. It’s almost like Bailey Rae took influence form everything that came before in music and made sense of it, where so many others tend to get lost. It sounds easy to listen to, which is the miracle because music like this is very hard to create- something truly original.

Best Songs: Erasure, Red Horse, NY Transit Queen, Before the Throne of the Invisible God