Tom Dunne: Raye is a phenomenal talent but she almost didn't make it
Rachel Keen, known as Raye, at the BRIT Awards 2024 ceremony at the O2 Arena in London. (Photo by HENRY NICHOLLS/AFP via Getty)
I have become fascinated by Raye. I wouldn’t normally find myself on the same page as the Brit Awards, but her six wins seems about right. She is a phenomenal talent. But it’s how she made it and the story that tells us that is so jaw dropping. Because, even with her generational talent: it almost didn’t happen at all!
I became aware of Raye, via daughter #1. She has inherited the “listen obsessively” gene. About a year ago I was summoned: “Track you have to hear, Dad,” she told me. I listened.
The track was ‘Escapism’. I won’t lie; it isn’t easy to listen to an explicit music lyric with your 16-year-old daughter without your inner nimby kicking in. And it is excruciatingly explicit. Your hand instinctively reaches for the off button. But of you can suppress all that, it’s worth it.
It is an exceptional piece of writing. It is visceral tale of escapism through illicit drug use, wild drinking, casual sex and anything else you’re having yourself. The lyrics, google them, are jaw dropping. Not since I heard Eminem’s ‘Stan’, have I been so engaged by a story. Naturally I’m praying my daughter just doesn’t get most of it.
So, to see Raye approach 5 billion streams, edging ever closer to the stratosphere occupied by Dua Lipa and Taylor Swift, is no surprise at all. What is a surprise is how the record company let her go. Honestly, not since Dick Rowe passed on The Beatles.
A little context then if you care to listen, Raye found herself once in a shit position. She’d been determined from a very young age to pursue music. To this end she had attended the famous Brit school, as had Amy Winehouse and Adele.
It didn’t suit her. She dropped out after two years but aged 17 was signed to a four-album deal by Polydor. This I presume, given her age, was a little like the deal Kate Bush once signed when she was 16: sign them up, let them develop, no rush.
Kate famously took dance lessons during this fallow period before her album release at 19. By contrast Raye almost immediately started to enjoy success as a guest singer on many chart hits. She was also soon co-writing songs with other unknown artists like em, Beyoncé. Yes, Beyoncé.
Yet, despite all that, by 2021, seven years after having signing to Polydor they had still not released even one of her own albums. And she was broke.
If you see her in interviews at this point its sobering. She is often given to explaining how little the writer makes from a hit record. “Marketing can take 80% of the points on a record,” she says, adding that she knows Top 10 Billboard writers, who “can’t pay their rent.” Imagine how dispiriting that is to hear for anyone in the music business. That you can write at that level, with that degree of success and still be broke!
It was at this point Raye took to social media. She berated the record company, demanding they release something or release her. She was emotionally and financially at the end of her tether. The videos she posted at the time are quite upsetting. Something had to give.
The record company released her, but it was not the end of her problems. As recently as 18 months ago she was pleading tearfully to her booking agent not to drop her. Mercifully, he booked her on a short tour of 100-capacity venues.
Other miraculous things were at play. Her mum, a mental health worker in the NHS and her dad, who worked in Norwich Union, gave up their jobs to manage her. But does it really take a parent to deliver the management an artist needs in 2024? Is the industry itself that unbelievably bad?
The next bit of the story is the good bit. 'Escapism' was a hit out of the box. The album, My 21st Century Blues, went to number two. Within a year the Brit awards were proclaiming that this is the Best Artist, Best Song and Best Album of the year.
That someone with Raye’s level of talent can come so close to not making it is shocking. “There’s a guy works down the chip shop swears he’s Elvis,” Kirsty McColl once sang. At this rate, it will be Elvis. “Coulda been a contender,” he will say. “Extra vinegar please,” we will answer.
