Corinne Bailey Bae is reflecting on the media’s perception of her as “boring” in the early years of her career.
The Put Your Records On singer had her breakthrough moment in the mid-2000s, at the same time as fellow Brits Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse.
Looking back at this period during a new interview with The Independent, Corinne recalled: “In the British press, I was seen as boring and straight. I was making acoustic music, wearing these kinds of old-fashioned dresses.
“I was also married. I was so not interesting to them.”
She went on to recall a “campaign” that Lily started, branding Corinne “middle of the road”.
“[Lily] had started talking about me like that, but I wasn’t going to engage in [any back and forth],” Corinne added. “I thought, ‘I’m not going to bother with that. Stevie Wonder likes me, so it’s OK that Lily Allen doesn’t like me. That’s fine’.”
Both Lily and Corinne were nominated in the now-defunct British Female Solo Artist category at the 2007 Brit Awards, with the Smile singer telling The Mirror at the time: “Corinne Bailey Rae? I think she’s a bit boring, sorry.
“She’s a lovely girl but I don’t think her music stands out and I’d be a bit annoyed if she won.”
Corinne is currently in the running for this year’s Mercury Prize for her politically-charged fourth album Black Rainbows, released in September 2023.
The album was inspired by an exhibit she saw at the Stony Island Arts Bank, described by the singer’s team as a “curated collection of Black archives comprising books, sculpture, records, furniture and problematic objects from America’s past”.
“I knew when I walked through those doors that my life had changed forever,” she said around the time of Black Rainbows’ release.
“Engaging with these archives and encountering Theaster Gates and his practice has changed how I think about myself as an artist and what the possibilities of my work can be.”
