Raye is here, blessing the bleakest timeline with her vocals, energy, talent, and taste

Dear Gossips,

It was cinema. It was orchestra. It was extra. It was euphoria. It was artistry, beauty, royalty…

It WAS RAYE.

No. It IS Raye.

Raye is here, blessing the bleakest timeline with her vocals, her energy, her talent – her TASTE. Emphasis on taste because Raye is making the music she wants to make, without interference from a label, and her latest album, THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE, is the kind of record that label executives could never understand; so, basically, a masterpiece. It is unusual and sprawling, it is not “radio-friendly” or even TikTok-friendly, really, because of course Raye isn’t interested in writing and performing songs by formula. In walking away from those who were asking (or forcing) her to produce music that wasn’t true to her, Raye confirmed that there are a lot of people who want to listen to the music she wants to make. Or, rather, experience the music that Raye makes.

Because Raye’s music is a full-body hit, a spiritual trip, working its way into your soul, demanding participation, giving you no choice but to accept that what should exist between a song and the listener is a proper relationship. She defended this truth last night on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, throwing down two performances on a stage that has hosted so many of the greats, from The Beatles to Janis Joplin to Barbra Streisand to Tony Bennett to Ella Fitzgerald and more than proved her worth.

If you haven’t already, prepare to be so awed, you might be brought to tears – it can’t just be me. How can anyone resist being moved by the urgency in her voice, the conviction in the lyrics. Or how charming it is to see her singing with the mic cable over her shoulder (one of her signatures), less concerned with showing off a dress than she is with making sure she’s undistracted and immersed in what she’s doing… although she did have her shoes on (barefoot is also a signature) this time, but it didn’t make the performances any less grounded and raw. As if that’s even possible when Raye is around.

When Raye is around, it’s only rapture. I think I was levitating during “Click Clack Symphony”. When she goes into the second round of “send the call out, send the call out, calling all my baddest women, it’s about to go down”, I wanted to Captain Marvel my body through the top of this office building and fly myself to New York to join her.

And then on “Joy”, as she’s joined by her sisters Amma and Absolutely, resplendent in yellow, now with her shoes off… when they “declare there will be joy”, honestly… I believe her.