Bailey Rae’s tunes would sound right in a ’40s club.

Long Live the New Queen of Brit Soul

Truly timeless records rarely come along, but Corinne Bailey Rae's self-titled debut album is certainly one of them. The 27-year-old singer's songs are saturated with warm, melodious, vintage-flavored soul and delicate, shimmering jazz; they wouldn't sound out of place in a '40s dinner club or on '70s FM radio, yet they're still infused with a distinctly modern sensibility.

Corinne Bailey Rae: hatcheck girl turned superstar.

Corinne Bailey Rae possesses a spirited, all-embracing attitude toward music.

Bailey Rae herself, who was born in Leeds to an English mother and Caribbean father, possesses a spirited, all-embracing attitude towards music: She first flexed her vocal chords in her local church choir before her love for bands such as Led Zeppelin and Hole prompted her to pick up a guitar and start an all-girl rock quartet called Helen when she was only 15. "We were all about the punk ethic, that as soon as you know three chords you can write songs," she says with a laugh. "It was very raw." But it was Billie Holiday who really inspired her to trust her instincts and let go of her inhibitions.

"When I was growing up, we had Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey," she says, "and I always thought, 'It's a shame I can never sing like that.' So when I heard Billie Holiday, who had such an unusual voice, it was a revelation. I realized there were different kinds of voices in the world, and it made me think maybe I could try to really sing instead of just make a racket with a guitar."

Her decision to focus on her singing was a gamble that has paid off: Following the release of her nostalgia-drenched debut single "Put Your Records On" earlier this year, Bailey Rae was named 2006's top artist to watch by the BBC. Shortly thereafter, she became only the fourth British female in history to have her first album enter the U.K. charts at Number One. And her appeal, evidently, is international - when her album Corinne Bailey Rae was released Stateside in June, it went straight to Number 17.

Bailey Rae welcomes all of these laurels with characteristic humility. "I never expected that the album would do well," confesses this former jazz club hatcheck girl. "It didn't sound like a straight-ahead R'n'B record, so I just thought it would be quite niche-y and only a certain group of people would like it. It's become so much more mainstream than I ever imagined. And that's brilliant!" She grins. "I'm really very pleased."

Posted on September 04, 2006