“Get your pink chubby hands off my mouth / ‘Fuck you think this is? I told my lawyer: ‘Stand by – there is no wrath like a woman scorned.'” “All the white men CEOs – fuck your privilege!” she sings on her brilliant new single ‘Hard Out Here’, an uncompromising slab of confessional pop. Still, when she said a year ago that she was “done being a polite pop star”, RAYE wasn’t making an idle threat. Having wrestled back control of her career, RAYE isn’t about to let her narrative run away from her. However, there are points in the interview where it’s clear she’s holding back parts of her story until a future date when it makes sense to share them. She’s also a relaxed host: some musicians would wince at the idea of welcoming a journalist into their house, but RAYE puts NME completely at ease by making coffee and chatting about ABBA’s virtual concert residency. Throughout our hour-long conversation, the artist born Rachel Agatha Keen is as warm and straight-talking as she’s always been. And you know, some of the things I had to put my body through to even be able to that… it’s really quite sad.” But as a woman, it just doesn’t feel like that. “When you sign with a record label, technically they work for you: you’re signing to a company for them to work for your career and take you to that next level. “It’s weird,” she tells NME today as we sit in the kitchen of her south London home, a few miles from Croydon, where she grew up. “Unfortunately we have had different goals artistically and I am very grateful to them for giving me a graceful smooth exit to start my next chapter as an artist.” After eight years on a major, RAYE found herself navigating unchartered and potentially choppy waters as an independent artist. “Polydor are an incredible infrastructure power house team,” she wrote graciously. It’s fair to say the shit hit the fan, and three weeks later, RAYE announced that she had and Polydor had parted ways. But according to RAYE, this wasn’t enough: her euphoric follow-up single ‘Call On Me’ needed to “do well” for the album to get a green light. How could an artist who’d been signed since 2014 and scored nine UK Top 40 singles be feeling so stifled? The situation became even more baffling when you factored in RAYE’s side hustle as an in-demand songwriter who’s written for Beyoncé (‘Bigger’), Mabel (‘Let Them Know’) and Charli XCX (‘After The Afterparty’).Īt the time, RAYE was riding high in the charts with ‘Bed’, an inescapable dance collaboration with David Guetta and Joel Corry that has now amassed 350 million Spotify streams. RAYE’s public expression of her intense frustration – “I’m sick of being in pain” – sent shockwaves through the music industry. I want to make my album now, please that is all I want.” “Ask anyone in the music game, they know. “I’ve done everything they asked me, I switched genres, I worked 7 days a week,” she wrote on Twitter. This is a song for a season such as this.A year ago, RAYE called out her record label, Polydor, for delaying her debut album. The power is in the person of Jesus Christ who is behind the blessing. Remember, the power is not in the words of the blessing. It is a vision of God's very best for you. Looking back, perhaps this song was a gift from God to the world, right on the heels of the virus outbreak. The lyrics come straight out of the priestly Blessing in Numbers 6:24-26. Kari Jobe and Cody Carnes visited the Elevation songwriting team a few weeks ago, and together experienced a unique moment of inspiration. In fact, it is so hot that it hasn't even been released on an official album yet. Here is a list of eleven modern worship songs that can truly minister to you and the people you lead in this time of chaos and uncertainty. During times of chaos, these songs take on new meaning as a lifeline to calm anxiety and help us fix our eyes on things that are true. During good times, these songs are lovely to sing together. Somewhat oblivious to the virus, we have seen a host of incredibly powerful worship songs rising to the surface in churches all around the world. Authentic worship leaders, this is your time. Songs put words of truth on the crest of melodic waves, triggering emotion and piercing our hearts. We need you to bring us songs of hope, comfort, perspective, and truth. In all the seasons of life, this is a time for worship leaders to stand strong. How can we survive this? We need each other. Social distancing has become the new buzz word of our day. It's a global crisis, for sure, but the effects are also very personal. COVID-19 has sent our world into a tailspin.
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