For W's Pop Issue, British singer-songwriter raye opens up about her viral breakup anthem “Escapism,” her debut album, and why she won’t be pigeonholed into a single genre.
Shortly after the release of her debut album,, the British musician Raye posted a TikTok with the caption “I find myself in a great position,” an inversion of a line from her breakup anthem with 070 Shake, “Escapism.” The song, which has been used in more than a million TikToks and streamed over 500 million times on Spotify, has become inescapable since it came out last fall.
While Raye’s bluesy, powerhouse vocals bring to mind Adele and Amy Winehouse—both alumni of the same music school that Raye attended—her lyrics hark back to poets of ’90s hip-hop like Nas and Mary J. Blige, who wrote with urgency about their interior world and the chaos around them. Raye doesn’t shy away from heavy topics on tracks like “Body Dysmorphia” and “Environmental Anxiety,” but she also makes plenty of room for joy with dance floor–ready bops like “Black Mascara.
Snippets of Raye’s live shows—like one of her belting the revealing ballad “Ice Cream Man” in her underwear—show a performer for whom connection means everything. When asked about her onstage presence, she shared the definition of “sonder,” a word that is important to her: “It’s the feeling of overwhelm that comes with the realization that every individual human being is living a life as detailed and complex as your own.
Fittingly, she takes a “very analog” approach to production. “I play the keys; I produce. I arranged a lot of the horn parts and the string parts. We bring brass on tour and have live drums whenever we can. I want that raw, live feeling,” she said. Both her sound and her aesthetic transmute 1950s pinup style and the soulful haze of 1930s jazz clubs into her own very 2020s perspective. “To think that I was going to be this EDM girl for my whole life,” she mused, trailing off.
Hair by Naoki Komya for Oribe at Julian Watson Agency; makeup by Erin Green for Chanel Beauty at Bryant Artists; photo assistant: Tommy Francis; makeup assistant: Hanna Friedrich.
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