Track Listing

1. Like A Star
2. Enchantment
3. Put Your Records On
4. Till It Happens To You
5. Trouble Sleeping
6. Call Me When You Get This
7. Choux Pastry Heart
8. Breathless
9. I'd Like To
10. Butterfly
11. Seasons Change

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2193 in Music
• Released on: 2006-02-27
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
When soul music is at its finest, a great vocalist can take you along on a journey into their sadness, loneliness, joy, and passion. When mixing that voice with horns, harmonies, and a bluesy Hammond organ, that same music can seamlessly travel across decades. Many new artists claim to accomplish that feat, but few are sincerely ageless and timeless: Corinne Bailey Rae has those qualities in spades. Rae--a newcomer out of Leeds, UK, with a gospel choir history--has created a self-titled CD that occasionally evokes the feeling of a '70s Bill Withers classic, while bringing inflections of Zero 7 and Alicia Keys to her grooves as well. Straight from track one, "Like a Star" displays a restrained soulfulness that shows her strengths through a whisper soft melody. Other standout cuts include the breakup-ache of "Till It Happens To You" and "Choux Pastry Heart," which discloses her jazz-affected timing and the level of powerful songwriting that she is capable of at her very best. In a day and age where a good voice alone can provide you with a golden ticket, it is refreshing to see that Rae has not only written or cowritten every song on her debut, she also contributes guitar, bass, keys, and percussion to the tracks. Her songs have some room to mature, but as a new recording artist in her mid-20s, so does she. Soul lovers, pass the word: this is one impressive debut. --Denise Sheppard

From the Label
It becomes self-evident the moment you hear her sing the very first note of her very first EP. That EP was called "Like A Star", and it showcases a slice of sublime Billie Holiday blues delivered with a voice that pins you, in the softest but most persuasive of ways, to the wall; a voice that floats up effortlessly, full of caress, subtlety and the very purest quality. It is wonderful, this voice, and surely a discovery to treasure, but it belongs to a young woman not from somewhere musically exotic--say, Mississippi or even Manhattan--but just east of the M1: Leeds. Her name is Corinne Bailey Rae, and she was born to do this.

CD Description
This is the eponymously-titled debut album from British blues-soul sensation, Corinne Bailey-Rae. Inspired by artists such as Billie Holiday and Jill Scott, this is a recording that displays a patchwork of influences, all held together wonderfully by Rae's unique vocal stylings. Includes the singles 'Like A Star' and 'Put Your Records On'.

Customer Reviews

Use your own ears
Well I cannot understand anyone who listens through an Ipod to a compressed MP3 file daring to make a comment on sound quality. The reason most things are so badly recorded is because the population are listening to WAV's through £10 headphones.
For those who have Hi Fi equipment, take a listen to Miss Bailey Rae. The vocal arrangements are oustanding, and though the recording has been made radio friendly this is still music that should be given positive consideration. I think she has talent, and as she writes as well as sings it would be great if she was encouraged, or we will end up with just Pop Idol clones to download onto disposable hard drives..
Not a great album, but very, very good. Give it a try.

Don't be too quick to dismiss this
As with a lot of people, I heard 'Put Your Records On' at some point on TV and loved it, gave in to all the media hype about this album and bought it. And like a lot of people, I was rather disappointed - it was almost anticlimactic. It wasn't bad, nothing too special.

However, things change.

As I continued to listen to the album - even if just for 'Put Your Records On' and 'Breathless' at first - it started to grow on me. If you ever listened to 'O' by Damien Rice, I suspect you know what I mean. What both of the albums have in common is that while they are at first disarmingly subtle (verging on boring, to be frank), they grow on you. In a HUGE way. It may take you 4, 5, maybe more run-throughs, but be assured that this CD is a sound investment. If you've got the patience to get to know this music, you won't be at all disappointed.

No Billie H, just pure and natural C B R
Expectations were high, fuelled by her performance on Jools Holland's show and the praise lauded thereon by Burt Bacharach, the frequent airplay across most radio stations of the two singles thus far released, and by some heavy-handed record company promotion proclaiming Corinne Bailey Rae's as the voice of 2006 and the new Billie Holiday.

My initial reaction to this CD upon trying to listen to it was to go in the completely opposite direction. For a start it took five attempts to listen to it all the way through without nodding off to sleep - it is so easy, one-paced and slickly produced that the temptation was to immediately dismiss it to the cure-for-insomnia or after-dinner-party categories. However, something has made me stick with it and convinced me it's more than just that.

I can't really see the comparison with BH myself, I think it's insulting to both ladies. If it's true that you're influenced by what you hear growing up at home, then I suspect that her family record collection includes Sade, Sly Stone and, from the mockney intro to "Put Your Record On", some All Saints. Corinne's singing voice sounds pure and natural, and very English (no hint of Leeds, though). I'm not sure how strong it is - the nature of the songs are such that she's closely miked and intimate, and they certainly don't warrant or get any vocal gymnastics - but you can hear every word quite clearly, which is quite remarkable.

The songs themselves are all self-penned, with help in the music department from various members of her band. The lyrics are simple and beautiful, some might say too much so, of her experiences in love and, in the later ones, reminiscing about growing up at home. The music is mostly that easy soul-lite pop that some people might call close to R & B. Apart from the current single the tracks are not instantly catchy, but they do grow on you, particularly the first six. "Choux Pastry Heart" is a wonderful title but a sad song with a dreary melody and, despite the hint of dub grooves in the later "I'd Like To" things never fully recover.

Corinne plays guitar and percussion on most of the songs, so she's not just a pretty voice. It's all very well produced - reading the credits they threw everything in except the proverbial kitchen sink - but, apart from some overheated bass guitar on some tracks, it doesn't sound artificial, just warm and comfortable. This will inevitably join the easy listening pile along with **** but it is sufficiently different, in a pure and innocent way, to deserve listening to more closely.