{"id":555130,"date":"2026-03-23T10:52:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T10:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/555130\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T10:52:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T10:52:13","slug":"raye-this-music-may-contain-hope-review-a-wildly-ambitious-epic-of-unbridled-self-expression-pop-and-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/555130\/","title":{"rendered":"Raye: This Music May Contain Hope review \u2013 a wildly ambitious epic of unbridled self-expression | Pop and rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last autumn, Raye<\/a> was the subject of a lengthy profile in a major fashion magazine. In it, the singer told an anecdote that placed her in precisely the position you would expect following her successful debut album: ensconced in the studio with a very big name producer, the better to capitalise on its success. But the recording session was, she suggested, \u201cfuckshit\u201d: the producer simply turned up with a beat and expected her to sing over it. Raye declined to, as she put it, \u201cdo that dance \u2026 I was just thinking: \u2018Get me out of here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The artwork for This Music May Contain Hope. Photograph: Human Re Sources<\/p>\n

This story seems telling in light of This Music May Contain Hope, an album that very much suggests an artist determined to go her own way. It\u2019s about an emotional breakdown occasioned by romantic woe, online criticism, a troubling call from her grandmother and, she notes, \u201cseven negronis\u201d. And, like Lily Allen\u2019s West End Girl<\/a>, it flies in the face of perceived wisdom about how people consume music in the streaming age, being a 17-track, 73-minute concept album divided into four sections and evidently intended to be listened to from start to finish.<\/p>\n

It is filled with lengthy, episodic songs that unexpectedly leap from Raye\u2019s trademark retro soul into the realm of swing-era jazz \u2013 the ghosts of Ella Fitzgerald\u2019s early singles with Chick Webb\u2019s band hover around I Hate the Way I Look Today \u2013 as well as house music, showtunes and 50s easy-listening schmaltz. Her soprano is occasionally deployed in distinctly operatic style; elsewhere her vocals take on the careful enunciation of the musical theatre star. There is a lot of very rococo orchestration, much of it in the style of a soundtrack from Hollywood\u2019s golden era, and the guest stars are heavyweight. Soul legend Al Green appears on Goodbye Henry, a sweet homage to the southern soul sound of his classic 70s hits, and Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer arranges Click Clack Symphony<\/a>. There are fourth wall-breaking lyrics (\u201cI told you this was a sad song \u2013 I did try and warn you\u201d) and there is a great deal of spoken-word exposition.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Raye: Where Is My Husband? \u2013 video<\/p>\n

It is, by any metric, A Lot. Indeed it occasionally feels A Bit Much, as it wobbles unsteadily along the line that separates unbridled self-expression from self-indulgence. The world could probably have lived without Life Boat, a deep house track topped with a plethora of differently accented voices all saying \u201cNever give up\u201d. Or Fields, a dialogue between the singer and her grandad, personal and heartfelt though it obviously is. Some of the spoken-word stuff seems distinctly surplus to requirements: it isn\u2019t really necessary to explain to the listener that they are about to hear a song about heartbreak if the opening line of said song includes the phrase \u201cmy first love kissed me goodbye\u201d. And album closer Fin lasts six minutes, four of which consist of Raye reading out the production credits.<\/p>\n

So there are flaws, but in fairness it pays off more often than it fails. As evidenced by current single Nightingale Lane, its highlights are pretty skyscraping. Beware \u2026 the South London Loverboy sets a snappy lyric \u2013 \u201che\u2019ll grab your arse and squeeze it before he leans in for a kiss\u201d \u2013 to hugely exciting music that splits the difference between the Andrews Sisters and a finger-snapping mid-60s soul revue. The WhatsApp Shakespeare makes thrillingly John Barry-esque use of the orchestra, transforming bumping mid-tempo R&B into the stuff of high drama with its sudden diversions into swing and, ultimately, eerie Twilight Zone atmospherics. Skin & Bones and I Know You\u2019re Hurting are more straightforward but no less exhilarating, dealing respectively in tough funk strutting and a ballad that builds and builds from a gloomy piano figure into all-guns blazing stadium rock replete with faintly metal-ish guitar solo. Raye sounds incredible throughout \u2013 she sings the hell out of these songs, and there\u2019s nothing ersatz about her approach to the jazz tracks, which is not always a given when a pop vocalist shifts in that direction.<\/p>\n

And despite the moments that feel de trop, it\u2019s hard not to like This Music May Contain Hope. It is wildly ambitious, in a pop era in which a lot of artists\u2019 ambitions extend no further than maintaining their career. But the end result feels less like a showstopping grand artistic statement than a wild, fascinating, occasionally messy miscellany of ideas. If you were desperate for a classic rock analogy, you could say it\u2019s more Tusk than Rumours, or more Sandinista! than London Calling. Which makes it something of a rare event: you simply don\u2019t get many albums like this in the 21st century, because the climate of the 21st century has led artists to be risk-averse. That\u2019s not a label you could pin on Raye.<\/p>\n

This Music May Contain Hope is released on 27 March<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last autumn, Raye was the subject of a lengthy profile in a major fashion magazine. In it, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-555130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}