Top 102 Quotes & Sayings by Corinne Bailey Rae
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British singer Corinne Bailey Rae.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
I used to plan a lot. But I've realized the vanity in that.
When Prince is into what you're doing, it's just surreal.
I often find myself having deep and emotive conversations with people.
I saw tons of young black girls who really got the message of 'Put Your Records On,' which is specifically a message for black girls about self-love and embracing your natural hair.
I am engaged with the news, I vote, I write to my MP, I stand up for things that are important to me.
My dad hates reggae. He's from St. Kitts, which is a really British island, with Victorian values. He doesn't have a strong Caribbean accent. He didn't play Caribbean music in the house. He was really into soul music, collecting soul 45s.
I recognize that my voice is kind of quirky, and I don't have a lot of range. But I use it kind of in a conversational way, like Billie Holiday, I guess.
Americans like things that don't sound American.
Being mixed race in Britain in the '80s and '90s, there just weren't loads of people who looked like me.
People make assumptions about me based on my music. I've literally had people stop me in the street: 'You are so sweet. I bet you haven't had a bad thought in your whole life!' I'm like, 'Really? I hate to disappoint you!'
Don't spend time wishing your life away, waiting for things to be perfect.
American music has become really heavily stylised and focused on production. With producers like the Neptunes and Timbaland, it's so much about the backing track rather than the song.
I am drawn to those sad and beautiful moments of life.
I love to watch films, going out and watching bands, going out dancing.
When you're in a relationship with someone, it's so much about tearing down the walls between you two that you sort of confuse what is you and what is them. When you lose them, you question: 'What is left of me?'
I wouldn't describe the artist Theaster Gates as a mentor, but I pay attention and keep my ears open when I'm with him.
I don't think, like, 'I've got to sell so many records here, or so many records there.' That's the record label's job. They've got to worry about how were doing in Kazakhstan or Germany. My job is just to write and sing.
As an artist, you want to form your own identity and be your own performer.
Even right in the middle of the worst times, I remember thinking that I would choose this exact life again, that I would do it all again.
Reggae is not music I know inside-out.
I don't get involved with what other people say in reviews.
Belly made me aware that you could write songs that were mysterious or vulnerable. Their guitar-led music was in some ways very simple, the opposite of the pop music I was brought up with, like Michael Jackson. It made me realise music was something that you could be part of, make in your room.
I read someplace that when I was signed to EMI, they reeled in the 'hit-makers.' The presumption is that 'cause you're a young girl, black, smiley, with curly hair, you can't have written the songs. It totally winds me up.
I won this poll thing in England about predictions, and it was all these journalists and reporters trying to say that I was going to be big in '06. My name was at the top of their list. I was like, are you sure you've got the right person?
Writing about relationships is political. The personal is political.
I love the idea of the winter rose that's sort of sleeping underneath the soil. Underneath all the snow is this plant that was growing and developing and could present itself as this beautiful flower in this time where everything else around it is very barren.
I worked in a band a long time. As we got older, we became more aware of soul and jazz.
I've written a soulful record but it's informed by my sort of indie guitar past.
My whole vibe is not really fronty and aggressive and blingy.
On the first album, it was me and a producer in a basement going though hundreds of snare drum sounds to find the right one.
Being a musician is quite cerebral - there's a lot of sitting around.
As an artist, you have to express yourself. You just can't stop being an artist.
I didn't expect my popularity to be a mainstream thing, 'cause I'd only ever been an underground artist.
When I did my rock band, I pined for a more soulful sound. I wanted music that was very melodic and blues-based.
I'm compelled to make music.
With 'The Sea,' I was just thinking about loss, about the impact losing your father would have on you as a child, how one event that big could colour your life, bleed into everything else and force you into a certain shape.
Life is full of things that you can't predict.
I think I just really, really love singing.
With music I feel like it's the one time when I don't have to think and I don't have to contrive anything.
I find so much freedom in singing and so much expression of my self. I feel so connected to the people in the audience, and I feel spiritually connected when I'm doing it.
There's something really wrong with using Botox: it stops you making facial expressions - people are so interested in how they appear that there's no intention of projecting how they feel.
I started an all-girl band called Helen when I was 15. It wasn't a precocious thing to do - everyone we knew was in a band, and all the bars and pubs in Leeds put on nights.
I find this western idea that ageing is wrong really distasteful. You should be happy that you look 50, you look 60, you've got to 70 - it should be an achievement.
I don't respond well to time pressure - when you're in the studio, with the clock ticking, and the record company's waiting for you to lay a golden egg. Wherever it is my music comes from, it just doesn't show up when the pressure is on.
My parents got divorced for the same reason that most people's parents get divorced: the relationship had stopped working. I was about 12 or 13.
I loved music from a young age. At school I played the violin but I didn't sing much; there was an expectation of the kids in the choir that they'd have really pure tones, and my voice had all this texture to it. The anodyne soul of Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey was in the charts and I couldn't relate to it.
All the changes you go through personally really affect the music you make, and my music on the one hand is personal and the other it comes from my lived experience and the interaction with the world around me.
It's kind of a journalistic thing to say, 'This person is the next so and so.' I think actual musicians are never really into those kinds of comparisons.
Everything I do I just want to be real and honest.
I was really enjoying playing 'The Sea,' but it is quite an intense and emotional record.
My dad, Chris, is from St Kitts. He worked in computers. I remember the first laptop when he brought it home. People from primary school came to check it out - it was huge.
I love the sound of a Fender Rhodes or James Jamerson-style bass lines that are their own melody, and live drums and Moogs.
Punk and jazz are the opposite ends of the same spectrum because they are both looking for freedom and they give musicians the right to take music in their own directions.
I don't just work one way. I enjoy working with others.
My mum would take us to ballet, and we used to go as a family to Brownies. My dad used to take us to Saturday music school. My parents would never say: 'Oh, you've got to practice your violin now before tea.' We were self-motivated.
I think a lot of style is about attitude - posture, deportment, gaze and confidence. I saw that in my mum. She was a cleaner when we were growing up, but she had this stylish presence I admired.
Every time you go on stage, you want to prove yourself because you are in front of a new audience.
We went to Baptist church as a family, and that took up so many nights a week.
I believe that energy can't be destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another. There's more to life than we can conceive of.
I'm really aware that I can't hide any of my feelings.
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