Corinne Bailey Rae

0:06Pushkin. This is an iHeart Podcast. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speedtest. And they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

0:48where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Traveling is one of life's greatest joys. Honestly, can anything be more exhilarating? well actually yeah with chase sapphire reserve it's your gateway to the world's most captivating destinations first you will earn eight times points on all purchases through chase travel and the card gets you into sapphire lounge by the club at select airports nationwide and access to one-of-a-kind experiences whether you are booking a once-in-a-lifetime trip or your next weekend escape discover more with chase sapphire reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC.

1:40Subject to credit approval, terms apply. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hoodie, you want to take it off? I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming at me? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's no such thing.

2:14Corinne Bailey Ray is an English singer-songwriter whose career started with a bang. In 2006, her debut album topped UK charts and was certified triple platinum with the help of her first hit single, Put Your Records On. A slew of awards and other best new artist distinctions followed. As she put out subsequent albums, Corinne aspired to stretch herself as an artist beyond neo-soul pop music success. In September, Corinne Bailey-Rae released her fourth album, Black Rainbows. It's an album inspired by her time spent exploring Chicago's historic Stony Island Arts Bank, a vast collection of Black cultural relics and writing.

2:51Corinne's new album is in many ways a reaction to the art she consumed in that archive. It's performed in a mix of jazz, rock, and the avant-garde. On today's episode, I talked to Corinne Bailey-Rae about the years she spent in the Arts Bank archives and the stories that inspired her new work. She also talked about her record label's exhaustive efforts to push her to recreate the success of her first album and how a skateboarding magazine helped clarify the look of her new record. This is Broken Record. Line of notes for the digital age. I'm Justin Richman. Here's my conversation with Corinne Bailey-Rae.

3:30Your record, I listened to it. I just went for a walk to go get some coffee and listen to it again. Like, it is really surprising how many different sounds are on here. Like, I loved that I never settled into, like, a groove listening to it. Yeah, yeah. It's like, with each song, it's kind of growing, evolving, changing. It's awesome. It's incredible. Thanks very much. Yeah, I wanted to have all these different styles, but it really came about naturally from responding to the objects, responding to the events. The idea that came seemed to be in a particular style, whether it was, you know, a punk song or whether it's more aggressive guitars or whether it's more like a ballad or something more psychedelic.

4:09Like it all it all just kind of presenting itself to me like that. But yeah, it is. It bounces you around a lot. What were the first handful of songs that you came up with for the record? I'm just curious how, you know, like how it started and how it evolved sonically. I think the first handful of songs were, I wrote some in the residency. I went to the Arts Bank. Once I'd encountered the Arts Bank building, you know, Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago. You can see pictures of it online. It's the foundation that runs it. It's called the Rebuild Foundation. It's on the south side of Chicago, which I don't know how much you know about the south side, but it was a very vibrant middle class black area in the 60s.

4:55and then it's just had so much decline and unfunding and now it's really, there's a lot of difficult issues there with housing, mental health, drugs, violence. But there's this one building there on Stony Island that hasn't been pulled down by the city. The city wanted to pull it down and Theaster Gates saved it. He bought it for a dollar and raised$4 million by selling his own art to make this a building again. So instead of being full of money, it's full of art. It's full of art artifacts. It's full of 26 ,000 books that were submitted to the Johnson Foundation who did Ebony Magazine and Jet Magazine.

5:35Wow, cool, man. Exactly. So all the books that were submitted to them over the years for review as well as the books that Johnson and the Johnsons collected. And then it has all of Frankie Knuckles' records. So it's got this big slice of Chicago house music and it has all the glass slides from the University of Chicago so when they digitised their archive, they just gave all this a bang, they had nowhere to store it all. And it also has all these difficult objects that were pulled out of circulation by a black and Chinese banker called Ed Williams. Problematic objects from America's past, you know, the trinkets and the mammy jars and newspaper articles, photographs, cartoons, all of these things that he would find in flea markets and yard sales that he wanted to just buy and put in a box in his house so nobody else was buying them and putting them in their house and keeping it all going so he had these boxes and boxes of things and they became too much even for him to be around 16 000 objects so they are also all in the bank as well so i went looking around just as a as a tourist as someone who's interested in history and black histories and stories and hidden stories erased stories and and when I left I just couldn't help but you know I was just scribbling a poem here or starting to write a song here and I spoke to the astro about it and he said you know you should come back be an artist in residence you know we can they have buildings nearby so we stayed there for two weeks and just really dug into the archive read loads of books saw loads of objects attended loads of events and then I've just been going back there very regularly all through these years you know since 2017 so i mean the first song i ever wrote about the bank was called you who walk these floors in fear because i'd seen a sculpture that was made from the abandoned floorboards from a police station and the police station had been left for many decades and these floorboards were from there and i thought about what they had been witnessed to you know how often in history it's the witnesses are silent you know they're the buildings they're the windows they're the the trees the soil the slave cabin that you know the things that can't talk but they you know they've seen the truth yeah so that's the first thing i wrote that's kind of on i guess a part two of the record which i haven't finished but then i wrote he will follow you with his eyes and erasure and then maybe before the throne of the invisible god it just kind of you know started from there he will follow you with his eyes is certainly like a dance element to it so maybe that's the frankie knuckles chicago house of it all how did you write that song like started to start off with words where you got a piano guitar with he will follow you with his eyes i had seen all this advertising and i'd found a tin of a beauty product when i was in chicago i'd opened the drawers of the stone in the ed williams collection and seen this tin and it had this beautiful illustration on and it was this company called valmore so then when i was home I was doing all this research about Valmore and finding out they were kind of like the Avon of their day so they would sell these beauty products door to door the guy who did the art for them they all had these amazing illustrations on line drawings and it was this black artist called Charles Dawson so they had very sympathetic drawings you know that the line was targeted at black men and women and it was targeted in this really romantic way whoever did the marketing was really good so the perfumes wouldn't be called things like follow me boy or look me over and then when you'd read something in you know ebony or another publication about valmore and it would have all the products listed it would say in a big banner across the top you know his eyes will follow you across the room you know and it would be a then it'd be a series of wigs or something that they were selling so they sold all kinds of things and um i thought about valmore and just how enticing it was you know sometimes I'd read about the hair products and think I wonder if you could still get this because it sounded like from the description that it did everything you know it's like it's nourishes but it's not greasy and you know it does that it's a styling product and it's it's a pomade and it's and I thought gosh they were so good their marketing was really good and obviously it was um it was a sympathetic view of black men and women but it was very much aligned with white beauty so the beauty they were aiming at was you know lighter skin straighter hair all of these things so I guess with the song I wanted to present a kind of 1950s dream world where you're really under the spell of this kind of advertising you know you can imagine them knocking at the door and if you're a black woman you know you're going to be taking the hair straightening cream and you're going to be taking the the skin lightening cream and all of those things but halfway through the song the person who has been very much under the spell of valmore you know there's this sonic disruption and then they end up saying you know i don't want to vanish into a girl that i don't recognize you know if if you want to run to sweet sweet georgia brown with another kind of skin lightening cream you know light like brown is the thing not dark after that line it's like a break and it's like a break in the song yeah it's a total break and the person everything just falls away and it gets much more contemporary and it's just you know i'll be there with my plum red lipstick my black hair kinking my black skin gleaming i wanted it to be a sort of a shock and kind of you know really assertive and that the person would be sort of back in there back in their self and away from this really enticing beauty which held many people under its way for a really long time the repetition of those lines make it really feel like um like a called arm as much as like a refrain you know it's just it's beautiful and like the way it just repeats and repeats repeats and the production evolves over that second half of the song just it's like it feels it feels subversive in a very cool way oh thank you as you're writing out the words you know at that point the song should move into something else yeah i wanted it to be a shift away from you know in the beginning we had vibraphones and guitars and we had strings and it was all very dreamy.

11:56I was imagining like, you know, those probably Californian movies that were shot, you know, where a car would be sort of winding round the roads wrapping a mountainside and the sun shining, you know, that kind of 50s dream world. And you can live in it, but at some point you have to, when you break out of it, you realise how all-consuming it was. And so, yeah, I really wanted to have that repetition. but I wrote it on guitar so I would always just be like pulling one string plum red lipstick my black hair and then I guess when we did it in the studio we just um you know we wanted wanted it to evolve like didn't don't bring the bass straight away and have this more like cosmic sort of weird jazz moments it's like is it futuristic is it 70s it's you know what we wanted it to be um we want it to be different to what had gone before yeah it's it's incredible it's really cool and the tone of the beginning does sort of remind me of like well like the late 50s like early 60s almost like a it's akin to like a Frankie Valli production or something but then yet again just like everything else on the record it's like halfway through it's like oh shit we're on to something else now you know I really like it and I thought you know some people saying it's close to what your sound has been historically so I really liked the idea that you might put it on be like oh finally I can just kind of relax in this you know but then you listen to words what is she saying she's saying lighter and brighter why is she saying longer and straighter and you know it's kind of you know i feel like the eye in that song is not really me it's kind of this i don't know shirley bassy type eartha kit you know delivering you know everything you know i want to you want us being more dramatic than i would normally sing it you know trying to sort of be in that world i'm so happy to hear a shirley bassy reference like she's incredible and no one talks about her anymore she's and same with earthy kit i can just uniquely bizarre but beautiful voice yeah yeah i love that but you know i didn't want to say that but that's what was my response listening to the albums when it got to that song i was like oh okay something that not you know it's not that like i pigeonhole you in my mind but but by the time i got that song i was like oh this feels like familiar terrain familiar yeah yeah and it was and that's you know writing it in a this sort bossing over a guitar style it's like you know i write a lot of songs from there so yeah i love that there's like um it's not like you rap on it but there's some tracks like new york transit queen really where it sounds almost like similar to the way esg like kind of like it was like they weren't rapping but they were like aggressively talking on the track but also rhythmically it was like that's very cool super cool it's a really cool reference because i did find that esg record amongst Frankie Knuckles stuff as well, you know, Frankie Knuckles Archive.

14:39Oh, wow, yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, this band are so cool. I don't know enough about them, you know? I don't know enough about them. But, yeah, I really want to use my voice in all these different ways on the record. I mean, I think it was a side project, so I didn't feel any sort of beholding to the music that I've done before, and I thought it doesn't matter if it's really different to what I've done. In fact, it should be really different to what I've done because it's a side project. It's not me. it's like you know I was calling it for it was like the Chicago project it was for ages it was just that and first it was going to be an EP and then it turned into more but it was yeah it was only really towards the end of it that I thought oh I really should claim this as my own it has been my obsession for the last seven years and I want it to be my record now but it's only really when I saw my name on it you know we worked with this brilliant graph artist called Manu Shribley he's an art designer and I'd seen his writing on a skateboard magazine and then just kept calling him like please please can you do this it just has to be you and but I realized I hadn't told him don't put my name on so I told him you know here's some photos and it's called Black Rainbows but I hadn't quite explained oh it's not really my project it's a side so when I saw my name written down I was like oh I forgot to tell him not to put it on but then when I saw it and And just even the way he'd written it made me reimagine myself.

16:00It was really weird. But just something about the way he's done that script, just being free from all the different fonts that I feel like I've tried as sort of logos of my own name. And then suddenly there was just this free writing. And I thought, yeah, I really like how that looks. I like how that is. Do you typically look through skate magazines or was that a fluke? No, it was a real fluke. It was just the way they had it presented. I think I've probably got it here, the one I saw. Oh, cool. So it's like, who's this elegant sort of black teenager on the front? And then this writing. I mean, so I couldn't even work out what it was called at the time.

16:37Yeah, I was going to say, what is that called? I think that's this Renaissance issue, but the magazine's called Numbered. But I really, really like magazine shopping. And there's a shop called Colors May Ferry in Leeds that I go to. but there's also this store that's um it has like a car heart downstairs and loads of skating but it's got magazines upstairs and it's everything from punk zines um you know like rad you know trans bi queer publications and and then just art house stuff and fashion stuff and so i always think magazines are really special i mean i know you can get loads of loads online now but just seeing how someone's put all the work into it and putting it together.

17:23And, you know, it costs money to make all these shoots. So I was thinking, like, you can pay your£7 or£12 or whatever it is. And I don't know, I'm still really analogue. So I love coming home from town with just, like, 10 magazines. And then you get to see, like, oh, who was the art director? Who was the, you know, so I really like to do that. And I like to read in the bath, you know. So you can't really do that with your phone. Just you end up destroying your phone. I've done it before. I have. I have. I do. Why did I do that? It's less fun. It's way less fun. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like at some point people will realize, just like with vinyl, you know, that it's like it's much more fun.

17:58You could scroll Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or whatever, but it's way less fun. It's way less fun. But also there's a limit to it, which is good, whereas, you know, you never get to the back page of the internet. And so your brain is... I've got this completest thing sometimes when I'm on Instagram and then I'll look up and hours have gone past. And I think, I'm trying to just get to the end and there will be no end. Whereas with a magazine, you know when you've done the whole thing, you know? You know, yeah. It's kind of, it's nice. It's kind of like a sad thing because you got to wait for the next issue, but it's like, it's healthy.

18:30It's healthy. It's like, okay, now go and eat some food or like go outside for work, you know? Yeah. That dead-eyed scrolling thing that you can get to it like just before you go to bed. It's so bad. I, you know, really try not to do it now. We're going to pause for a quick break and then come back with more of my conversation with Corinne Bailey-Ray. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at OOCLAS Speedtest, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

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19:58where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ukla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Everybody loves to travel, right? We can get away as a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, all of it. And no matter where you're going, Chase Sapphire Reserve is your gateway to the world's most captivating destinations. Travel is its own reward, you know. You're out there having experiences you can't have any other way, and with your Chase Sapphire Reserve card, you're also being rewarded. You earn eight times points on all purchases through Chase Travel.

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21:12Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and A-member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers, the pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50 % of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, pull this, pull that, turn this. It's just like doing my eyes closed. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these.

21:52Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise, lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the runway. I'm looking at this thing. Listen to No Such Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back with Corinne Bailey-Rae. So you really, you weren't thinking of it as a side project, just as a way to trick yourself into being a bit more outside of your comfort zone in music making. You were legitimately thinking about this as something that would not have your name on it.

22:36It wouldn't have my name on it. and then I thought oh I'd like you know people could be pleasantly surprised if they found out that it was me but I was really I think because as soon as I thought of it as a side project then I just felt completely free I'm not doing it for a label I don't it doesn't have to have radio songs it doesn't have to have three minute songs they don't have to be catchy they don't have a tradition have to have a traditional form you know like some of them don't have a second verse or some of them have no choruses or some of them have I don't know eight verses or whatever it is i just wanted to make and i wanted it to be kind of messy and i felt all the time really excited that you know i think before i would have had a song like before the throne of the invisible god and then thought okay what else can it do maybe i should put in a middle eight or maybe now i've got to get it smaller now i've got to get it shorter could we change the beat did it you know and i just where does that come from in you i think it's just for years of being a label you know where you're interacting with people I mean when I did my first album it wasn't without any A &R at all because we had this really good DJ called Gary Davis who would sort of I was working in a production company with him so but pretty much we did it amongst ourselves it was me and Steve Chrysanthou underneath this art shop in a place a sort of place out of town near Leeds in New Yorkshire and then we could take it to the labels and say here we are it's whatever it was 12 songs do you like it do you not like it some of them loved it some of them didn't get it and then we interviewed and then we found our home at EMI at that time well then it sounds like it was sort of you more than the label right because it's like I mean the first album is very tight sort of pop not in the vacuous sense but it's very tight songwriting you know it's a more sort of pop record and i think but yeah definitely gary was an influence on that it was more like i wrote tons of songs and they were the songs that people were saying oh it should be this one it should be that one you know i had a manager at the time i was young i was like oh yeah this one not that one this one not that one um i'd already written like a star when i was in my band and of course i did want to connect with people you know i i wanted to make it work i wanted people to hear it you know wanted it to be received in a way that was yeah yeah i wanted it to be received it's like i was you know i had my english literature degree but i was working a cafe and working in a jewelry counter and you know going down to london when i could to write these songs with people and i really wanted to sort of make it you know i wanted music to be the thing that i did so i did work i worked really hard on that record and it went through a lot of people's hands in terms of maybe my manager saying yes or no or Gary Davis saying yes or no and then obviously various labels eventually saying yes but I think from then on because it was so popular I then felt a real pressure with you know certainly my third album to try and somehow recreate what I had already done but I knew I didn't want to because I didn't it didn't feel creatively good to do so so but yeah I'd had so many meetings where I'd be really excited about a song you know we'd work on it and we'd send it down to whoever was the A &R or the label at the time would be just like oh I'm waiting to hear back I wonder what they think and and then you'd get a sort of response and be like yeah it's good it doesn't sound like the first single there was always this thing about what's the first single you know the first single has to smash the doors down the first single has to be so catchy the first single has to be a radio friendly the first single has to be this it's unique it's different it's you you know people are basically saying oh it needs to be what put your records on did but of course that was such a different moment and it was kind of felt like an accident to me it was just like this is a weird song a little song that I love and it wasn't like anything else but it was just accidental that it was successful so then I always you know I'd always feel that pressure and I I'd put what I thought was a good offering forward and the response was always like not quite like are you crazy this isn't it but not that far off it you know just kind of like yeah bit of sideways look and then it'd be you know I I wrote Like a Star on My Own when I was, you know, a teenager.

27:03But there would be a sort of like, oh, maybe we could pair you with this person or that person. So we ended up doing lots of co-writing, which is always weird, where it's like, hi, we don't know each other. We've got five hours. Let's make a smash hit. But the person would always be like a giant in music, you know, so then it's even more intimidating. You're like, if this isn't working out, it's me, not them. So I just think it kind of, it sort of crushed my confidence a lot. And it kind of dinted my radar or my instinct for what was right for me, I guess. So I just keep trying. Was that starting with the second record?

27:39I mean, the second record was different because it was kind of a reaction to my first album. So I wanted to play more guitars and have it more indie because my first record was so much more of a pop soul record. It felt like an evolution. It felt related to your first record, but it felt like a step forward. yeah thanks and I loved it and yeah I guess I had got more into jazz and into soul but I also had all my indie stuff but I think in terms of politically at the label I had gone through a big loss at that time you know my first husband had died really unexpectedly and so everyone at the label was very kind and understanding and no one pushed me at that time so I felt like the first record I got to do what I want the second record I'd kind of got to do what I want because nobody wanted to upset me or they just were happy that I was making something and genuinely they were good people you know they you know they cared a lot for me my one A &R person who I still really love he's a friend he came up to see me like every two weeks with fancy cakes from London and we just sat and talked about nothing and it was a really beautiful time actually and then he'd occasionally play me like hey there's this bonkers Lady Gaga and Beyonce song or have you seen this So like he would kind of tell me what's happening in the world because I was very much in my own sort of bubble.

28:54So in a way, I think by the third record, there was a lot of pressure because maybe they had wanted to do more with the second record, but they couldn't because I was in this delicate place. So the third record was like, right, we've really got to make this count, you know. And that was the rhetoric around me. It's like, yeah, really, this is the one, you know, just don't throw it away, that kind of feeling of, you know. Got it, yeah. And it's because of that, I just felt this immense pressure. I feel like I wrote three albums where I could have written one for that. And it was just, what about this?

29:28No, what about this? Not the first single. What about this? I don't really hear it. I don't really get that one. And then after a while, I didn't need to go to present it to them. I could just hear the voice in my head saying, don't bother finishing that. It's not an international mega smash, you know. And I was like, yeah, it's really rough. I sort of look back on that time and feel really sorry for the me that was that person. And I look at The Heart Speaks and Whispers and think, well, I'm glad that I got as much done as I did. And I'm glad that there are some good songs on that record. But it was really hard to work from an instinctive place, even though the record was about following your instincts.

30:07You know, it's called The Heart Speaks and Whispers. But those whispers were very easily sort of drowned out by other people and by myself, probably. you know so with this record I knew I wasn't at a label I didn't think it would take as long as it did but I was like I am just going to do something completely different to anything I've done before like I'm not going to feel those pressures I'm not going to think about radio I'm not going to think about what I've done before because it's not even my name and because of that there was just this torrent of creativity and not just that because I was working within this archive the labour was like sitting reading a bunch of ebony magazines you know or like going to an amazing exhibition in new york soul of a nation or going flying to milan to see betty sarr's retrospective you know the prada foundation i didn't think of it as work and it wasn't work that was me just sort of following my news but all of those rich things that you're all fed into the record so it was really fun to do and the right way to do stuff I guess is just to wait until you're really excited and then just let it fly out how did you end up in Chicago that first trip where you visited I was on tour I was on tour with the Heart Speaks and Whispers so we had done you know we were probably done New York and done you know Connecticut or somewhere and then we'd flown into Chicago and I remember saying to one of my managers I'm really annoyed because I really wanted to meet this brilliant artist theaster gates and i didn't tell you and now he won't be able to come to the show like i was really fatalistic and she somehow managed to find him that day and he did come to the show i didn't know and when i was getting changed she shouted me she's like don't get changed come out with someone to meet you and i was so excited to see him i didn't know he was going to be there i'd seen photos of him so i knew it was him and i was just buzzing to talk to him and be like you know you've saved this building from demolition that's what you do that's part of your art practice and you're into ceramics and i love ceramics and you know he has this background in the the black church and he has this band called the monks of black monks of mississippi and so he's got this music part of what he does as well and he's lectures at the university and he's super brainy and so i just was like i'm gonna really excited to meet another creative person and because it's art you know there's no rivalry i mean there'd be no rivalry between the two of us.

32:30Theaster is literally internationally known, you know, artist whose works sell for, you know, millions. But it was really good to just have a scene that, you know, he had nothing really to the music industry. And I, of course, had nothing to the art world. And so it was just kind of me and get to know each other as friends. That's so cool. That's like it all came together and that it inspired this sort of next, like a rediscovery of yourself to what we're talking about the first record. I really like first record i think it's really good but it always it always seemed like i remember reading interviews from you at the time that it seemed like your influences were a bit deeper than that record conveyed you know or more varied than that record conveyed not that and it's a really great album i mean it's like a really well done album but it always did strike me that it's like oh there's something else going on though and there's some undercurrents that aren't being expressed you know i'm really glad you could you could see that and feel that and that's how i felt at the time it was a funny mixture of feeling I feel really accepted because people have taken this thing that I made in my hometown I played on my guitar and I wrote and then here it is in the world but also it felt like I was somehow keeping a part of myself secret or hiding a part of myself and maybe that is that that part you know it's like the music that didn't necessarily come straight out of black cultures or the music that I'd grown up listening to you know like the indie music I mean I know black has a rock has a black origin as well but I didn't get to show the part of me that loves electric guitar and loves indie music and this complex simplicity of a band like Nirvana you know this the simple direct nature of that kind of music and all those weird you know Bjork or Tori Amos or you know those I felt like on the first record I didn't get to show the whole thing.

34:20I just felt like I've got more and different things to say and I just want to keep feeling that there's more to say or else why would you bother saying it? Yeah, one thing that was cool about the first record that stood out, because it didn't feel like that was a time when there was a lot of kind of milquetoast acoustic music, I don't want to name anyone, but your music felt particularly a little deeper. And I think because it connected to you, I was thinking about it, like in the States, I guess we have Bill Withers, but beyond Bill Withers, there wasn't a strong tradition of like the soulful singer songwriter, even though there was great songwriters in soul music.

35:01Whereas in the UK, Linda Lewis or Labby Siffri, like there's these people who could like play guitar acoustically and make records that were essentially soul records and it kind of felt like that was similar to what you were doing and i that kind of resonated with me at least you know there's like this really great songwriting that it's soulful but it's it's just presented in this way that is unique at least i think feel like in the states you know as soon as someone pulls on an acoustic guitar out here it gets immediately it's a little saccharine you know yeah i mean i'm i'm so glad you said that and i mean bill withers is i mean obviously a god in everyone's world but he is you know right at the top of the tree and i watched that documentary i don't know if you saw it a few years ago it came out still bill you know it was that's one of my favorites it's such that's such a good album but you know the documentary that came out when he was still alive and he was talking about this period of his life where people were saying kind of trying to convince him to change his style you know he said there was people at the record label and he called them the black spurts and he'd say like you know he's like you need to get above that stool and you need to get two dancers and the gold lame shirt and just start you know maybe disco was coming in and his kind of homely folksy you know yeah it just yeah it was somehow not seen as commercial enough but also there was an undertone to like oh it's not black enough it's not black enough yeah i mean like that's that's always what struck me about being black in the uk from afar i've only been to london once but from afar it always seemed as if y 'all had a little more freedom over there to express layers of yourself you know whereas what's here what's black is very you know put on the the whatever the lame shirt and and you know it's so interesting with african-american culture because obviously black music black american music is kind of like the the pinnacle to me of like creative arts partly it comes out of that segregation and separatism so i know what you mean it's like it's a very specific blackness which is very specifically not whiteness yeah and in the uk it's more messy and hybrid because we didn't have legalized segregation you know you had the black african people working plantations but they were in the caribbean and that was separate from England, even though they were owned by English white people, Scottish and English.

37:37Separate culture. Yeah. But then when the Caribbeans came, they, I guess, had already been in a hybrid culture where they were black majority islands, but there were lots of white people there. And, you know, they're influencing each other and then sort of coming in, but also being influenced by American imports, you know, vinyl imports. And, you know, think of like a Bob Marley and how much he's obviously into Curtis Mayfield and all those harmonies. Oh, yeah. But he's also doing his own thing with it. So I always think, like, Caribbean music is sort of hybridised anyway. And then you get this thing in Blackness where the people are black, like, you know, my dad's family came from the Caribbean, but they also thought of themselves as British because the Caribbeans were a British colony.

38:25So they already had their British passport. So it's really, it's a different, it's a really different scene, Black Britishness. But I know what you mean. I think it's less defined. It's less strengthened by institutions and the Black universities and the NAACP and the Black church. And they're all the things that make Black American music so great. but I also think the sort of the hybrid messy thing of the UK means that I feel like people feel blackness is less defined it's not like someone's drawn a chalk circle around you and if you step out of it you're not authentic or you know your blackness is in question and then of course mine's further complicated because my mum is white my dad's black so it's like it's that as well so I you always used to you know be playing and think is this do i like this because i am not black do i like this because i'm or and then i would find loads of my black friends would also be feeling or being accused of not being black enough you know so you realize that it's a construct and then you know even to this day my you know black girlfriends will be like i'm going to the carnival west indian carnival so like i need these kind of earrings and this kind of clothes to almost present as black and so it's that thing has really done a number on all of us where we we limit ourselves or because we think that there's a certain expectation of blackness and that was another reason why the record's called black rainbows because i really wanted to push out to say like oh yeah this is a punk track but you know i'm wearing a bad brains t-shirt in the video because Bad Brains is this amazing black punk band.

40:10And, you know, this dissenting music also has a black thread and black origins. And they've been kind of written out, not Bad Brains specifically, but those black and ska kind of origins of punk are sometimes not acknowledged, you know. Well, you know, recently a Bob Seger song came on the radio for me. And I was like, oh, fuck. I was like, no one, I just never listened to Bob Seger. or like something from one of his first records came on. I was like, damn, why didn't no one tell me how great this is? So I started listening and I kind of got a little obsessed with like hard rock music or like the origins of hard rock, like, you know, late 60s through the 70s.

40:50And so I started making like a playlist, like kind of like, what was the stuff that made hard rock, hard rock? And what I realized was listening is a lot of it came from, well, there's a lot that came from London. There's a lot that came from Detroit. Yeah. And a lot that came from LA, but a lot of it was out of Detroit. and a lot of it was white guys trying to be soulful, trying to do R &B. Yeah, yes. I mean, you could say that's the start of the Beatles, right? Yeah. It's fascinating. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. And there was a big scene in the UK, a kind of Northern soul scene, which was definitely, you know, young white bands hearing American imports and wanting to, you know, do them.

41:28Or you think of, you know, sort of Patti Smith, you know, quoting a Motown song or you know tainted love you know being redone by mark armand there was there was many incidents and as we're saying earlier you know the Beatles themselves picking all these like little Richard songs to cover and it's like stones yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah and they all really acknowledge you know oh we love muddy waters but you know at the time the irony of it was that it kind of took white english young kids appreciating black r &b to kind of sell it black white america you know they took it as like it's the british it's the british invasion it's as like you guys should just change the radio channel occasionally twist and shout you know it's like listen to the isaac brothers or listen to chuck berry or listen to you know but for some reason it filtered through that connected with them for all the different complicated reasons reasons that had to be that way yeah but i mean that relationship between the bouncing back and forth between some of the uk and the us is is something that i'm really you know into and following those threads you know i love the music history yeah and it's fascinating i mean into your point about like those blues and soul imports that like kind of would find a home in the uk that there was really not much of a home for of them in the US that's another thing about the UK that I've always envied from afar is it's like it's always in a place for black people to go to feel except you know the classic stories like Hendrix going there or just other various places in Europe where you know jazz musicians are just going because it's like or Tina Turner just moving to Sweden because it's like this is way better you know yeah or Switzerland or Sweden one of those yeah just people escaping the particular type of american racism which one that comes out of that long-standing segregation and just the amount of brainwashing around you know we are different inherently different peoples you know all of that racial constructs that's so powerful in america i think it is nice for black people to come to to europe i'm not saying it's not a land without racism but it's different different flavor and But even just the difference makes you realize how subjective and constructed the whole thing is.

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