Born in Leeds, Corinne Bailey Rae began her career by learning the violin but she soon learnt to love a wide variety of musical styles. Her eponymous debut album, released in 2006, won her Brits and Grammy nominations and further global acclaim thanks to feel-good hits like Put Your Records On. Her new album The Sea was released recently after a hiatus of nearly two years following the death of her husband and fellow musician Jason Rae.
My Childhood favourite
Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, Stevie Wonder (1979)
When I was really young this record fascinated me. It's the soundtrack to a documentary about a scientist who believed plants could feel pain. It's really trippy and jazz-influenced. It had this green cover and, when you opened it up, all these lush pictures and braille. I found that amazing. There weren't any visually impaired children at our school so it was this big fascination for me: "What do you mean this musician can't see?"
The album that opened up the possibilities of music for me
Debut, Bjrk (1993)
This was such a revelation to me as a teenager. I'd always thought pop stars had to be really sophisticated and grown-up. So I was enchanted by Bjrk's childlikeness. I'd never heard a voice like hers, with all its character and glottal pronunciations, or music recorded with background noises, like the sound of the city or a bus pulling up. Debut redefined what popular music was and what a professional singing voice could sound like. After the very literal songs of the late 1980s, early 1990s Do You Wanna Be My Baby? all that sort of stuff music became more abstract or figurative.
There's More to Life Than This wasn't about two people meeting on the street; it was about escaping, about going to the bakery and getting the first bread of the morning. Suddenly I felt, "Wow, there are all these different ways to be a singer. I didn't know you could write songs like that."
Getting together my first band
Star, Belly (1993)
I started an all-girl band called Helen when I was 15. It wasn't a precocious thing to do, everyone we knew was in a band, and all the public places in Leeds put on nights. We were all underage and everyone knew it. I really liked that scene: walking down the street making up songs, going to play them in front of strangers who accepted them as legitimate.
I was seeing loads of Belly, Veruca Salt, Courtney Love and PJ Harvey all these women who played music independently. That was formative. Belly made me aware that you could write songs that were mysterious or vulnerable. Their guitar-led music was in some ways very simple, the opposite of pop music I was brought up with, like Michael Jackson. It made me realise music was something that you could be part of, make in your room.
Starting University
Songs for Distingu Lovers, Billie Holiday (1958)
In my first year of university I began working at a jazz and soul club called the Underground. There was a different type of music on every night it was a really good education. I loved my indie bands but working at the club I started to pine for more complicated harmonic expressions, which really affected me emotionally.
I liked Billie above all the other jazz singers because nothing was show-offy. To me, she had stuff in common with people like Kurt Cobain because there was all this pain. She would boil a melody down to its essential notes so it almost became like a grunge song.
Making my new album
Dear Science, TV on the Radio (2008)
I didn't listen to a lot of music [after my husband died], I could not really listen to noise. But I heard this in between recording the first and second halves of my album after I saw them playing Golden Age - Later Live... with Jools Holland. It was amazing, watching this bearded guy with glasses singing falsetto. One minute into the song, I was Googling them.
They're really thinky people, and this album is hard to define. I really like the bohemian scene in New York and Philadelphia. Actually I named a song on my album, The Blackest Lily, after the Black Lily event that Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson [of the Roots] runs in Philadelphia.
