{"id":535618,"date":"2026-04-17T08:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/535618\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T08:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:12:14","slug":"i-dont-have-to-suck-up-to-anyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/535618\/","title":{"rendered":"I don\u2019t have to suck up to anyone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raye \u2014 the 28-year-old south Londoner who put her name in lights with songs about heartbreak, loss and longing \u2014 has an announcement to make. \u201cMy third album, I think I\u2019ve named it already,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be called And Then She Fell in Love. And I\u2019m not writing a single song \u2014 be it one year, five years, ten years \u2014 until that chapter of my life begins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fans may be forced to matchmake. More than 56 million people stream Raye\u2019s music on Spotify every month \u2014 her 2023 single Escapism has been played more than a billion times. Her second album, This Music May Contain Hope, was released in March and is at the time of writing No\u20051. Collaborators have included Al Green, Mark Ronson and the Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer. Earlier this year she won her first Grammy, for her song Ice Cream Man.<\/p>\n

She was texting a man for a bit \u2014 but it was the 68-year-old Zimmer (\u201cin May last year, casually, I sent a text to Hans and said, \u2018Hey, I have this song I\u2019ve been working on, and I just think it needs you to be part of it,\u2019\u200a\u201d she says). Given that she is midway through a continent-spanning 51-date tour, which started in Poland in January and ends in May at the O2 in London, when\u2019s a girl to hit Hinge? Perhaps a career hiatus in the name of love may be required, even if it breaks a lot of hearts. \u201cThat\u2019s my silent protest,\u201d she says, giggling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Love is fickle but it\u2019s not as fickle as the music industry, which is something Raye may know better than most artists. In 2014, aged 17, she signed a four-album deal with Polydor Records off the strength of her self-released 2014 EP, Welcome to the Winter. But by 2021 she still hadn\u2019t put out an album. She had been working \u2014 writing songs for artists such as Beyonc\u00e9 and Charli XCX, providing vocals for dance musicians including David Guetta and Jax Jones, and releasing dance-based singles with Polydor \u2014 but the label wasn\u2019t backing her to put out an album in her own name.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AAliyah Otchere<\/p>\n

By 2021 the golden handcuffs arrangement had taken her to breaking point: she was self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, obsessing that her career was over before it had begun. In June 2021 she decided to press the nuclear button. \u201cI have been on a 4 ALBUM RECORD DEAL since 2014. And haven\u2019t been allowed to put out one album,\u201d she tweeted to her then 50,000 followers. \u201cI\u2019m done being a polite pop star. I want to make my album now, please that is all that I want.\u201d The post went viral as other musicians weighed in with their own stories of record label mismanagement. Polydor released her \u2014 calling the split \u201camicable\u201d \u2014 and in 2023 Raye put out her debut album, My 21st Century Blues. It went to No\u2005 and was nominated for the Mercury prize. The big swing paid off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Instagram (4.7 million followers), celebrities such as Naomi Campbell, Reese Witherspoon and Shawn Mendes leave emojis under her posts; Taylor Swift, whom Raye supported on the Eras tour two summers ago, goes to her gigs. In 2024 she won six Brit awards \u2014 the most Brits any artist has won in a single ceremony \u2014 and last year she played Glastonbury\u2019s Pyramid Stage.<\/p>\n

Raye\u2019s biggest song of 2025 was Where Is My Husband! It features on the new album, as do two songs about toxic boys: Beware\u2005 The South London Lover Boy, which has a brio reminiscent of early Lily Allen, and The WhatsApp Shakespeare.<\/p>\n

\"TheRaye at the 2024 Brit awards, where she won a record-breaking six BritsGETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

\"2026With Taylor Swift in Los Angeles last monthGetty images<\/p>\n

\u201cI have pushed myself as hard as I can and could have in the last two years,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I\u2019m not on stage, I\u2019ve been working on this album. I think we\u2019re in an age where you can feel like if you stop then no one\u2019s going to care, or it\u2019s all going to be over. And because I have worked so bloody hard to get to this point, part of you is, like, \u2018Feed the machine. Feed the beast.\u2019\u200a\u201d She now works as an independent artist with a tiny team. \u201cWe meet in my living room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rachel Agatha Keen was born in Tooting, southwest London, in 1997 \u2014 Raye is a nickname, a riff on the first syllable of Rachel and a stage name she started using when she became a musician. She grew up nearby in Croydon. Her mother, Sarah, is a Ghanaian-Swiss former NHS mental health worker and her dad, Paul, a songwriter and producer from Yorkshire. On her wrist Raye has tattooed three flags: Ghana, Switzerland and the Union Jack. Her first taste of music was in her local Pentecostal church choir, where Sarah sang and Paul was the musical director \u2014 he used to teach Raye to play songs of worship on the piano after Sunday services. (The family would also tune into The X Factor every week.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

She wrote her first songs at primary school and aged 13 started noodling around on Apple\u2019s GarageBand software, which is around the time her parents started to twig they might have a talent on their hands. The following year she won a place at the Brit School \u2014 the pop star talent factory that has produced Adele, Amy Winehouse, Lola Young and Olivia Dean \u2014 but after two years dropped out, feeling confined by the prescriptive lessons in songwriting. Instead, after getting her record deal, she started spending weekends in studios and on songwriting camps with stars including Rihanna, learning how to write on the job.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Raye\u2019s shows are gloriously theatrical \u2014 a big band, a bevy of backing singers, the singer dressed like a golden-age Hollywood starlet. Off stage she is undimmed. When we speak it is the week of her album release and she\u2019s deep in rehearsals for a gig in California, the first date of her North America tour, but there\u2019s no weariness to talk shop. She answers questions in low, throaty south London tones and tells stories that often end in a giggle. Her preferred curse word is \u201cflipping\u201d (at least when she\u2019s speaking to a journalist). She is steeped in the rubric of music \u2014 talking bridges and outros and round choruses. After briefly outlining the mechanics of Click Clack Symphony, her new song with Zimmer, she becomes animated. \u201cI can\u2019t even believe he\u2019s on my album. It\u2019s ridiculous. Life, right? Life is wild.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000884210071\"As a childX\u2009\/\u2009RAYE<\/p>\n

Gen Z is drawn to her music because it plumbs the lows, scales the highs, meets the tough stuff eye-to-eye: addiction, body dysmorphia, meaningless sex, bad experiences from her early youth when she was a child in the music industry\u2019s adult world. Her 2023 song Ice Cream Man, which won the Grammy, recounts her own experiences of being sexually assaulted, including by a music producer. But she also writes catchy songs about messy nights out: Escapism, her first No\u2005 single, is an R&B, electro-pop mash-up about a late-night mission to get over someone by getting under someone else.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tMore from the Young Power List\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The new album skips between R&B, soul, pop and soaring symphonies; from music to weep quietly to, to witty earworms that make you want to sing along.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a thing I saw on Twitter the other day,\u201d she says. \u201cSomeone was, like, \u2018Raye loves to put out a hit and then release a flipping jazz song that no one cares about.\u2019 And it was so funny because I was, like, this is so accurate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A decade in, two albums under her belt, \u201cI think if anything is shifting, it\u2019s The Man has less power \u2014 not needing a gatekeeper or a CEO to tell you yes or no, someone you have to suck up to or be on the good side of,\u201d she says. \u201cNowadays you could spend a million pounds trying to push a single, but if people don\u2019t like it, they don\u2019t like it. You can\u2019t force-feed things down people\u2019s throats any more.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"60thIn London in 2016PA<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding the droves of bucket-hatted, gently run-to-seed millennials who turned out to see Oasis last year \u2014 for most music fans these days, boys (or men) in bands are not the story right now. Raye, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo, Olivia Dean\u2005\u2026 it is young women writing the soundtracks to lives. \u201cI think women have always been doing that,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I look back through history, my favourite artists are women \u2014 Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Dinah Washington \u2014 women killing it in the 1960s.\u201d But women dominating the charts does not mean music is now \u201cfixed\u201d. There\u2019s \u201ca long way to go. We like to feel like we\u2019ve changed, but the same old stuff is happening behind the scenes, the same power imbalances, women wanting to be taken as seriously as men. We know that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her three younger sisters, Abby, Lauren and Katelyn, are musicians too (Abby and Lauren are supporting her on tour, under the stage names Absolutely and Amma). The difference from Raye\u2019s earliest days is that all of them are managed by her parents. It sounds quaintly old-school, like a travelling family band. \u201cIt just works,\u201d she says. \u201cThey work really hard and believe in us. It would be really flipping hard without my parents. My dad is so good at a pep talk.\u201d Does she ever feel tempted to\u2005\u2026 rebel? \u201cNo. I love it that way. I need it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000884153770\"Raye, right, with her sisters Abby, top, and LaurenPAUL KEEN\u2009\/\u2009INSTAGRAM<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000884153766\"Her parents, Sarah and Paul PAUL KEEN\u2009\/\u2009INSTAGRAM<\/p>\n

This might be partly because, like a lot of stars who grew up online, Raye is attuned to criticism. Several times she refers, obliquely, to a line from a review of her album that landed hours before we speak. \u201cI\u2019m terrified of people picking me apart and eating me alive. At the end of the day not everyone\u2019s going to love it but I know somebody out there will.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She stays off the internet as much as she can and looks for answers in a Bible app, not cruising Instagram. During her darkest days at Polydor, misusing drugs and alcohol, she credited her Christian faith with getting her through. \u201cI think since I\u2019ve come offline it\u2019s been much better. Ignorance is bliss. If someone said I look awful in a dress, it\u2019d make me sad. If I don\u2019t know someone said I look awful in a dress\u2005\u2026\u201d She is laughing now. \u201cSo I\u2019m really [big] on being offline.\u201d I wonder how she guards her privacy in real life. \u201cIt\u2019s taken me so long to get here, I\u2019d be terrified to jeopardise all of that by giving someone a bad impression of me,\u201d she says. \u201cSo I\u2019ll always say hello.\u201d Accidentally skipping a family in the queue at a Nando\u2019s inspired a mild meltdown. \u201cI didn\u2019t say, \u2018I\u2019m really sorry,\u2019\u200a\u201d she says. \u201cAnd for the next 48 hours it was all I could think about. That\u2019s the kind of brain I have \u2014 it will eat me alive if I make someone even a tiny bit upset.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She is sending herself up, but this sounds exhausting. \u201cPotentially that impacts how often I leave the house. Because my brain cannot reckon with leaving a bad impression \u2014 I just can\u2019t handle it. I need to talk to my therapist about it, maybe.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"CelebrityAt a concert with Mark Ronson in New York last yearStar Max<\/p>\n

Raye has a home in Streatham, where she lives with Abby and Lauren, and a six-bedroom, \u00a32 million mansion in Los Angeles. She has worn Fendi to the Met Gala and attended shows at Paris Fashion Week (she Lime-bikes between front rows). She spent her first pay cheque on a gold Volkswagen Beetle. But she doesn\u2019t seem to have much time to play with the trappings of pop stardom. She\u2019s on the road a lot, or writing, or in the studio. \u201cI\u2019m so excited for the shows but it is also a lot of hard work \u2014 so I\u2019m really excited to hopefully get to a place where maybe I can implement a little balance, because I\u2019m craving just being a human for a little bit. D\u2019you know what I mean?\u201d Perhaps a week on a beach? \u201cDo you know what I\u2019d like to do? Go backpacking for a month.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

There will be no disappearing act quite yet (be it to interrail across Europe or find the romantic muse for album three). With This Music May Contain Hope, \u201cI still have things I want to change, things that I wish I could edit, things that I\u2019m still not actually a thousand per cent happy with, but you just have to let it go.\u201d It\u2019s all in the name of the long career she feared was slipping away when she was a faceless vocalist for hire, writing hits for other people to sing. \u201cThese are the songs I\u2019m going to be performing on stage for the rest of my life. And I wanted to create music that I wanted to perform on stage for the rest of my life.\u201d
This Music May Contain Hope is out now\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raye \u2014 the 28-year-old south Londoner who put her name in lights with songs about heartbreak, loss and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-535618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}