{"id":727863,"date":"2026-06-10T17:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/727863\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T17:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T17:44:10","slug":"raye-reminds-artists-to-dream-audaciously-while-accepting-billboards-indie-spirit-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/727863\/","title":{"rendered":"RAYE Reminds Artists to \u2018Dream Audaciously\u2019 While Accepting Billboard\u2019s Indie Spirit Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

After shining a light on her journey as an independent artist in her Billboard<\/a> cover story, RAYE<\/a> attended Billboard\u2018s Indie Power Players event in New York City on Tuesday (June 9) for a well-earned victory lap.<\/p>\n

After accepting the Indie Spirit Award from Billboard\u2018s co-chief content officer Jason Lipshutz, the British singer-songwriter took the podium at The Cutting Room in Manhattan and gave a moving speech chronicling her trajectory as an artist. Touching on many of the points highlighted by her cover story in Billboard\u2018s Indie Power Players issue, she spoke about wanting to be a musician since she was 10 years old, signing with former label home Polydor Records and experiencing throughout her contract the frustration of dealing with \u201cpeople out there \u2014 in suits, sometimes \u2014 who think that they know best, who think that they get to look you in the eyes and tell you, \u2018This is your ceiling.’\u201d<\/p>\n

More from Billboard<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to encourage us to ignore those lies,\u201d she continued, shouting out J Erving \u2014 who was in attendance \u2014 for believing in her music and signing her to a distribution deal with The Orchard\u2019s Human Re Sources when every other label and company she met with thought her \u201cmusic was too complicated and weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

The celebratory night also included awards honoring Rub\u00e9n Blades and Orchard founder Richard Gottehrer. RAYE also got to sign a poster of her first-ever Billboard<\/a> cover, which went live in May and found the star also reflecting on her experiences with mental health, trauma and dating.<\/p>\n

After closing out her This Tour May Contain New Music headlining trek in late May, RAYE is now gearing up to open for Bruno Mars on a run of stadium tour dates. But first, she\u2019ll play a much smaller venue than the ones she\u2019s become accustomed to as of late, performing an intimate set at the Blue Note Jazz Club in NYC for Billboard\u2018s Indie Live event on Wednesday night (June 10).<\/p>\n

Below, read RAYE\u2019s full speech, available to watch above.<\/p>\n

I first want to just thank you for this honor. I\u2019ve just been eating a lot of burgers recently, so I\u2019m trying to suck in and look elegant. If I sound out of breath, that\u2019s why. <\/p>\n

Look, this is not a simple business. This is not a simple industry. This has not been a simple journey, but one that actually, maybe, sitting from this seat that I am now, maybe I wouldn\u2019t change anything. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been very vocal in the past about spending seven years at a major record label. When I was a young girl \u2014 I was 10 years old \u2014 I turned to my dad in the school playground, and I said, \u201cDad, I\u2019m going to be a recording artist.\u201d That\u2019s what I said. I was 10. Dad looked at me. He was like, \u201cOK.\u201d I was like, \u201cDad, no Plan B. This is it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I come from a place called Croydon in South London. We didn\u2019t have any connections, we didn\u2019t have any way in. Just a normal girl from a normal family in a normal town in a normal place. But what I did have for some reason \u2014 and I think it\u2019s something that all of us artists have to have in common \u2014 is the audacity to dream audaciously. I don\u2019t know why I believed that I could pursue music. I just fell in love with it, the craft of songwriting, and I dedicated every waking moment of my life to just figuring out how to make it work. <\/p>\n

When I was a kid, you think, \u201cRight, the steps I need to take is sign to a record label.\u201d So that\u2019s what becomes, \u201cThis is what I need to do.\u201d But it turned out, when I did sign to a record label, it wasn\u2019t everything that I had sadly hoped it would be. In fact, it was a lot of what I now want to call \u2026 I want to encourage all of us artists or anyone in this industry, there are people out there \u2014 in suits, sometimes \u2014 who think that they know best, who think that they get to look you in the eyes and tell you, \u201cThis is your ceiling.\u201d Who get to look you in the eyes and tell you, \u201cThis is all you\u2019re ever going to amount to. This is all you\u2019re ever going to be able to achieve.\u201d And I just want to encourage us to ignore those lies. You dust those things off, you give yourself a pep talk. And I\u2019m so grateful, my dad is my manager, and he\u2019s also my best friend and the sweetest guy in the whole world, and he will be like, \u201cRachel, you can\u2019t let this get you down. You\u2019ve got to keep going.\u201d He\u2019ll give me some football analogies, and then we\u2019ll go at it again. It\u2019s this tenacity to continue to dream audaciously. <\/p>\n

So I\u2019m so grateful that when I went independent, and I was looking for a home, I found Human Re Sources and J Erving at Human Re Sources \u2014 sorry, I said it twice. I haven\u2019t written a speech, we\u2019re just speaking from the heart right now. But yeah, J was the only man who liked my album. I went everywhere, I mean to every major label, every indie space, anyone who would take a meeting with my first album called My 21st Century Blues. Everyone thought the music was too complicated and weird and whatever, but J loved it, and I\u2019m so grateful he did. <\/p>\n

J believed, and it was such a beautiful moment, I\u2019ll never forget it. Everyone was kind of whispering that my career was over, whispering that and kind of laughing at me once we\u2019d shared our first two single releases, \u201cHard Out Here\u201d and \u201cBlack Mascara.\u201d You could feel it, you know? But I was like, \u201cYou know what?\u201d Dad encouraging me in my ear. \u201cDoesn\u2019t matter. What matters is art, making good art, because that\u2019s the only thing we can control. It\u2019s the only thing we can control as writers, creators \u2014 you can\u2019t control anything else other than your art. So I\u2019ll never forget the day \u201cEscapism\u201d come out, and three weeks later, just started going like this. Since then, my life has just changed.<\/p>\n

All those labels heard those songs. They said, \u201cThese songs aren\u2019t going to go far. People aren\u2019t going to understand this. People aren\u2019t going to connect with it.\u201d And if I\u2019d listened to them, maybe I would\u2019ve believed it. So I just want to encourage us to ignore the lies, ignore people that don\u2019t need to have an opinion over what you are, who you can be and what you\u2019re gonna do. You get to decide that. So let\u2019s keep deciding to make art that inspires us. Maybe it\u2019s seven minutes long, I don\u2019t care. I like it, I believe in it, and that\u2019s what I want to spend my life doing. I\u2019m so grateful, so grateful, that after 14 years in this industry since I started as a songwriter at 14, I really feel like we\u2019re just doing it now. I\u2019m so grateful to J, Human Re Sources, The Orchard and independent artists, come on, let\u2019s go! Thank you!<\/p>\n

\"Billboard<\/a><\/p>\n

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Sign up for Billboard’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After shining a light on her journey as an independent artist in her Billboard cover story, RAYE attended…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":727864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,11924,98394,134,352548,352549,136,213092],"class_list":["post-727863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-billboard","tag-cover-story","tag-entertainment","tag-indie-spirit-award","tag-jason-lipshutz","tag-music","tag-raye"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}