Corinne Bailey Rae once felt “sad” about the sound of her voice before discovering the music of Billie Holliday and Kurt Cobain.
The 47 year old singer has achieved major success with songs including Put Your Records On and Like a Star, but she initially struggled to appreciate the natural character of her vocals.
She recalled: “[I felt sad about my voice] because it had all this texture.”
After listening to artists such as Billie and Nirvana singer Kurt, however, Corinne began to recognise the special quality of her own voice.
Speaking on CBS’ Sunday Morning, she said: “It was like, ‘You are welcome in this space’. Their songs don't necessarily have to be, you know, shiny and perfect.
“And that just made me feel like I could be in music."
Put Your Records On, widely considered Corinne’s best known song, was only the second single she ever released.
Despite its popularity, she never expected the track to become such a major success.
Corinne explained: “With that first record, I wasn't thinking like, 'Oh, this is gonna be – ' Like, I had no idea that it was gonna be successful in that way.
“We made it in a basement studio with no windows. So, it wasn't like I went in with a certain kind of ambition. I just wanted to make the songs work."
Corinne’s world came to a halt in 2008 when her husband and bandmate Jason died from an accidental overdose.
She found it difficult to process the “huge amount of pain” that came afterward. Her second album The Sea eventually allowed her to explore how she was learning to accept Jason’s death.
Because she now views her story as two separate chapters, covering life before and after Jason’s passing, rebirth has become an important subject in her work.
She shared: “Because there's a possibility, every single time, of starting again.
“You know, any age and any space, you can sort of hit reset and do it again and go back into the fire, transform, and be out as a new thing, you know, every single time."
