Raye on the fight to release debut album My 21st Century Blues: ‘It’s been a real wild journey’

Published

3 years ago

January 28, 2023

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Raye is gaining her power back. Not just from the industry that made her feel “mediocre” for so many years, but over past traumas she kept bottled up for a long time.

“Some of my closest friends didn’t even know some of the stuff I’m discussing on my album,” she tells Sky News. “It’s probably the most honest I’ve been. It’s deep and it’s real.”

Raye, real name Rachel Keen, is only 25 but already a music industry veteran; a platinum-selling performer and a songwriter with credits for everyone from Charli XCX and Little Mix to John Legend and Beyonce.

She was just 15 when she released her first song and 17 when all her dreams came true, in the form of a four-album contract with record label Polydor. But after years of what seemed to be a successful career as a vocalist collaborating mainly on other artists’ dance hits, in 2021 she posted a string of tweets claiming the label was holding her back from releasing her own album.

“I’m done being a polite pop star,” she wrote, her frustration and anger palpable. The singer says after years of “trying to make it work”, she had reached the point where she had nothing to lose. “You get to that breaking point, really.”

Shortly after her tweets, it was announced she and Polydor were parting ways, with the label saying the decision had been “amicable and mutual” and wishing her “all the very best for the future”.

Fast-forward 18 months or so and Raye is in a very different place; now an independent artist, earlier in January she topped the UK charts for the first time with viral hit Escapism. In February, the debut album she fought so hard to make, My 21st Century Blues, will finally be released. No longer pigeonholed or stifled, this is the real Raye, she says, and it’s been a long time coming.

“The album is discussing a lot of different topics… the deepest depths of really ugly stories about assaults and body dysmorphia and environmental anxiety. I think there’s no limit on what I’ve really spoken on in terms of my perspective on my blues as a woman in the 21st Century.”

‘It’s things I’ve been silent about for so long’

Always outspoken, Raye is not an artist who sticks to trotting out lines of approved PR-speak when she’s being interviewed, and this candidness is evident throughout her music. “Being real and transparent is really important to me, to skip out metaphors and similes and cut straight to the point of what I’m talking about,” she says. “Some of these things I haven’t also entirely healed from.

“It’s definitely going to be a rollercoaster for sure, but one that I’m making the decision to go on. That’s kind of the artist I like to be, transparent, honest. I think that’s what I’m like in real life.”

One song, Ice Cream Man, deals with sexual assault. “It’s things I’ve been silent about for so long and swallowed for so long and self-managed for so long in non-constructive ways,” she says.

“I’ve written pretty transparently about sexual violence… multiple things that occur in a life that you just bury, bury down, hide in a box, don’t tell anyone. And it just festers and manipulates itself into something quite ugly.”

As with Escapism, a dark electro banger about using alcohol, drugs and casual sex as coping mechanisms for dealing with emotional pain, the album is a contrast of often melancholy or dark lyrics, with beats that will fill a dance floor, as well as a range of genres.

“You’ve got songs with a contrasting sonic landscape,” she says. “I find it really exciting to tell a story and then the music feel the opposite so I think there’s a lot of juxtaposition there.”

Irony in its ‘most hilarious and ridiculous form’

Escapism’s success feels ironic to Raye. “With the previous music, not in a bad way, but it was more about the song than about the artist. The big dance songs or whatever, they don’t necessarily say anything about me as a person. I never necessarily wanted to be someone who did huge, huge hits, but without depth and substance or discussing things I’m passionate about, or breaking a couple of rules.

“Escapism is such a personal story. It’s kind of dark. It’s extremely explicit and honest and raw… I really told myself on the beginning of this next chapter, I’m not creating music with the intent or purpose to sell loads of copies, it’s about integrity and telling these uncomfortable stories that I think are really important.

“I had all the preparation in the world for building a small, steady fanbase bit by bit, and to not expect anything in terms of mainstream reflection. So this is like irony in its most hilarious and ridiculous form, that this is the biggest song of my entire career.”

Despite it not necessarily being the plan, she admits topping the charts does feel like vindication.

“[I feel] like anything is possible and I was right to back myself,” she says. “Never give up on your dreams. For someone who [felt] so, like, mediocre and… such a disappointment, actually, for so long, to just receive all the affirmation in the world that I was right to back my music is just…”

She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. “For someone who puts words together for a living, I don’t necessarily really have the best words to describe how crazy this is.”

‘Fear is the driving factor of secrets’

Emboldened, Raye says artists need to speak out more about the inner workings of the industry. And despite moves to improve diversity and equality making headlines in recent years, she says misogyny is still rife.

“We do need to be telling these stories more,” she says. “I think things that happen in the darkness have so much more power than they do when they’re brought out to the light, you know? Fear is the driving factor of secrets, and truths and stories being withheld. But there is still that very sad view that women need to be guided and controlled and taught and given instructions to follow and meet these requirements.”

She sighs. “I don’t know… I think it’s probably the same for all artists but especially for women, especially for everything I’ve witnessed in 10 years in the industry. I think a lot needs to change, but I don’t think anything will truly be equal and fair until we’ve got the same amount of female CEOs as we do male CEOs, we’ve got the same amount of female staff working a video shoot as male staff, the same amount of female A&Rs, and the same amount of, you know, different ethnicities in these same roles.

“Balance overall is so important, and until we have that, there’s always going to be issues and problems when you have men deciding what they think is best for women.”

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Raye is looking to the future. She says she has had little communication with her former label bosses since she left, but wants to make it clear it wasn’t all bad. There were “some great people there who really believed in me… but obviously it came down to the big people making big decisions”, she says.

I ask her about the artwork for My 21st Century Blues; it features a little girl, dressed for the workplace but teetering in red stilettos hanging off her heels, standing atop a pile of instruments and recording equipment bearing the names of her songs, grabbing hands reaching out from inside. It feels poignant.

“That’s actually my baby sister on top of that big structure we built,” says Raye. “But that little girl up there is me, you know, seven years old, wide-eyed with a dream, not realising what the next 10 or 15 years of my life would be like.

“All the different life – in the industry and out of the industry – that I’ve had to navigate, process, understand, learn in my transition to being a woman, to being an artist, to being an independent artist. It’s been a real wild journey.”

Raye’s debut album, My 21st Century Blues, is out from 3 February

Entertainment

Observer editor-in-chief James Harding says BBC should be ‘put beyond reach of politicians’

Published

18 hours ago

August 20, 2025

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Observer editor-in-chief James Harding says BBC should be 'put beyond reach of politicians'

The Observer’s editor-in-chief has called for the BBC to be “put beyond the reach of politicians” – and has compared the fight for survival within television to the zombie fungus in The Last Of Us.

Speaking to Sky News about his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Wednesday, James Harding said it “is not the golden age of TV, it’s more like The Last Of Us… just trying to stay alive as the fungus of new things eats through all of us”.

The co-founder of Tortoise Media – which bought The Observer from the Scott Trust and Guardian Media Group in December – said he believes establishing the independence of the BBC is critical “if we want to build confidence in shared facts and respect for the truth”.

“At the moment politicians choose the chairman, they choose the licence fee, they have enormous influence over it,” he said.

“Let’s face it, there’s a suspicion that there’s a certain worldview attached to the BBC. Let’s make sure that it’s obvious to people that actually different points of view are really welcome.”

Mr Harding, who ran the BBC’s news and current affairs programming from 2013 up until the beginning of 2018, said the government must consider separating itself from the institution.

He explained: “When the government established the independence of the Bank of England in 1997, it put confidence in the central institution of the economy ahead of politics; the government today can and should do the same for the shared institution in our society by giving real independence to the BBC.”

The BBC has been criticised for a number of incidents in recent months, including breaching its own accuracy editorial guidelines and livestreaming the controversial Bob Vylan Glastonbury set, where there were chants of: “Death to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]”.

Following the incident, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said ministers expected “accountability at the highest levels” for the BBC’s decision to screen the performance.

In his lecture, Mr Harding said the BBC is “not institutionally antisemitic” and that: “Whatever your view of the hate speech versus freedom of speech issues, an overbearing government minister doesn’t help anyone.

“The hiring and firing of the editor-in-chief of the country’s leading newsroom and cultural organisation should not be the job of a politician. It’s chilling.”

Ahead of the BBC charter renewal in 2027, he said the corporation’s “survival is at stake”.

He argued that the BBC chair and board of directors should be “chosen, not by the prime minister, but by the board itself and then, like other such organisations, with the approval of Ofcom.

“The charter should be open-ended. And the licence fee – or any future funding arrangement – should not be decided behind closed doors by the culture secretary and the chancellor, but, as in Germany, set transparently and rationally by an independent commission that impartially advises government and is scrutinised by parliament.”

He also said the BBC should lead the way in striking deals with generative AI companies by taking advantage of the “meaningful pricing of its reliable, ceaselessly renewed library of content.

“That would help set the terms for other UK news and media companies that don’t get a hearing from the new generation of tech giants,” he said.

Mr Harding suggested that the BBC should look to work with AI developers to provide a “BBC GPT” that could enable the public to utilise AI “without handing over every last detail of what’s on their minds to US tech corporations that have proved obstinately unaccountable in the UK.”

He said it’s “about more than the BBC, it’s a national investment in our future that will come back to reap multi-platform rewards that an investment in no other UK organisation can.”

Edinburgh TV Festival runs from 19 – 22 August.

Entertainment

Robbie Williams reveals Gary Barlow collaboration on new album Britpop

Published

19 hours ago

August 20, 2025

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Robbie Williams reveals Gary Barlow collaboration on new album Britpop

Robbie Williams has revealed details of several star collaborations on his upcoming album, Britpop – including a track with Gary Barlow.

The former Take That singer teased details at a launch event for the record, which will be his first studio album of original songs in almost a decade.

He also announced he will play his “smallest-ever ticketed gig” as an intimate show for 500 fans, performing both his debut album Life Thru A Lens and Britpop in their entirety, following his current European stadium tour.

Williams listed some of the artists he has collaborated with on the new album, including Black Sabbath‘s Tony Iommi, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Supergrass frontman Gaz Coombes, and Barlow.

The relationship between the Take That stars famously deteriorated after Williams left the group, but the pair fixed their friendship in later years – and the Angels star reunited with the band for their Progress tour in 2011.

Their song on Britpop is called Morrissey, about the singer-songwriter and former frontman of The Smiths.

Answering questions from comedian Joe Lycett, who hosted the event, Williams said the song was written from the point of view of “somebody that is stalking Morrissey and is completely obsessed and in love with him”, but did not give any further detail.

Another track, Human, is about AI. “We are being told that we’re all about to be replaced, and we need clothes and we need food, so there’s a chance that we will be removed,” Williams said. “Whether it’s a prophecy, we shall see. But, yeah. It’s a song about what we’ve been told about AI.”

The singer rose to fame in Take That in the early 1990s before quitting and going on to have huge success as a solo star, with hit songs including Let Me Entertain You, Angels, Feel, No Regrets and She’s The One.

In 2023, he reflected on his life and career in a documentary series, in which he spoke about his struggles with the limelight and his mental health at the height of his fame. Last year’s Better Man – a biopic of his life in which the star was portrayed as a monkey – also tackled those issues.

Now, he says he is back with the kind of album he would have loved to have released after he left Take That in 1995 – the “peak of Britpop” and the year of Oasis’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Pulp’s Different Class, and Blur’s The Great Escape.

“I’ve kind of been musically a bit aimless for a little while because I haven’t known really what to do,” Williams said at the Britpop launch. “I chased yesterday an awful lot. Which happens.”

When you become hugely successful and then “commercial radio, whatever, stops playing you… you think, shit, what was it that I did?” he continued. “I just spent the last 15 years looking backwards. And I think with this album, if I am going to look backwards, I might as well just clear the decks, go back to the start and head off from there.”

Williams also spoke about other projects, including artwork and investment in arts education. “I want the entertainment industry to be somebody’s Plan A and Plan B,” he said.

“You know when you go to your parents, you say, ‘I want to be a singer, I want to be a dancer or be an actor, I want to go into the entertainment industry’. [The response is] ‘You better have a Plan B.’ I want to create the Plan B for people, too.”

Robbie Williams will play at Dingwalls in Camden on 9 October. Britpop is out the following day.

Entertainment

Kneecap rapper greeted by hundreds of supporters at terror charge court hearing

Published

19 hours ago

August 20, 2025

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Kneecap rapper greeted by hundreds of supporters at terror charge court hearing

A member of rap trio Kneecap has been released on unconditional bail after appearing in court charged with supporting a proscribed terror organisation – as hundreds turned out to support him outside.

Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the name Mo Chara, is accused of displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah at a gig in London in November last year.

Demonstrators waving flags and holding banners in support of the rapper greeted him with cheers as he made his way into Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday morning.

Supported by his Kneecap bandmates Naoise O Caireallain and JJ O Dochartaigh, it took O hAnnaidh more than a minute to enter the building as security officers worked to usher him inside through a crowd of photographers and supporters.

Fans held signs which read “Free Mo Chara”, while others waved Irish and Palestinian flags.

As the hearing got under way, O hAnnaidh confirmed his name, date of birth and address. An Irish language interpreter was present in court.

During a previous hearing, prosecutors said the 27-year-old is “well within his rights” to voice his opinions on the Israel-Palestine conflict, but said the alleged incident at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town was a “wholly different thing”.

O hAnnaidh is yet to enter a plea to the charge. The case has been adjourned for legal argument and he will appear in court for a further hearing on 26 September.

Who are Kneecap?

Kneecap put out their first single in 2017 and rose to wider prominence in 2024 after the release of their debut album and an eponymously titled film – a fictionalised retelling of how the band came together and their fight to save the Irish language.

The film, in which the trio play themselves and co-star alongside starring Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender, won the BAFTA for outstanding debut earlier this year, for director and writer Rich Peppiatt.

Last year, Kneecap won a discrimination case against the UK government after Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch tried to refuse them a £14,250 funding award when she was business secretary.

They are known for songs including H.O.O.D, Fine Art, and Better Way To Live, featuring Fontaines DC frontman Grian Chatten, with lyrics switching between the Irish language and English.