Making an album might seem like a strange project in an age of streaming, when so many listeners rarely listen to albums from start to finish.
For Raye, however, the album is not merely a selection of individual singles: it is a piece of highly personal storytelling. This Music May Contain Hope – the album that won her the Mercury Prize – is a one-hour-and-13-minute magnum opus. It sweeps from old-Hollywood jazz and big-band productions to cinematic orchestral flourish, guided by a voice that is by turns conversational and theatrical. It is a musical statement of what Raye can do when given free rein.
As she says by way of introduction in Girl Under The Grey Cloud, “allow me to set the scene”. It is 2023, and after seven long years of struggling to convince her former label to let her release an album, Raye independently releases her debut album, My 21st Century Blues.
Three years later, she has taken home the coveted Mercury Prize for her follow-up, This Music May Contain Hope. “Being able to even create an album is a privilege I will never take for granted”, she wrote on Instagram (below), posting a selfie that shows the singer smiling as she clutched her golden trophy at the awards show in Newcastle on October 22.
Director’s cut
Over 17 tracks on the album, Raye directs a genre-bending musical experience that is anything but minimalist. The production is opulent, with lush brass, layered vocals and even includes voice notes from Raye’s loved ones. Its most ambitious moment is Click Clack Symphony, a spectacular collaboration with film composer Hans Zimmer, bringing together emotional release with a cinematic soundscape.
Seeing Raye as a creative director does not mean she is a lone genius. Like any director, she leads a cast and crew, and she makes sure that her fans know who they are. She offers a heartfelt introduction to soul legend Al Green on Goodbye Henry, and at the end of I Hate The Way I Look Today, she sends the band off with the affectionate line: “alright everyone, have a cup of tea now.”
These personal little asides and reverential mentions all go in the mix as part of the singer’s M.O. On the six-minute-long closing track Fin, Raye names every contributor to the album. It is a rare gesture in pop, where credits usually stay hidden in the small print.
But what marks Raye out as a creative director is her insistence on contrast. On I Hate The Way I Look Today, raw, confessional lines about body image are set against the glamour of an old Hollywood big-band arrangement. And The WhatsApp Shakespeare, whose title alone pairs the modern with the classic, opens on a contemporary R&B beat before bursting into up-tempo swing and ending with James Bond-esque music that fades into a haunting outro.
By bringing the old and the new together, Raye shows us what makes up her musical DNA, as well as her respect for musical tradition. But she does it without slipping into nostalgia; rather, she pushes it into something new.
Setting the scene
Raye is, without a doubt, an incredible vocalist. What is most remarkable, though, is not just her ability to belt out tunes, but the range of vocal styles she uses on the album. From operatic highs to soulful ad-libs and playful scatting, it is the way she uses her voice that directs listeners through the melodrama of her stories.
Reviewers of her live shows have criticised her “tendency to overshare” in long spoken passages between songs. On the album, however, these spoken moments have a clear purpose. On Beware.. The South London Lover Boy, she sets the scene as a narrator, opening with a prologue in a distinctly posh accent, warning us about its title character.
When I first heard the opening of Nightingale Lane – “This is a song about the greatest heartbreak I’ve ever known” – I was struck by the boldness of the confession, bracing myself for the catharsis that was coming.
Like the title character of comedy-drama Fleabag, Raye’s spoken intros and outros break the fourth wall, creating a sense of intimacy with her listeners. The result is an album that is conceptually rich and musically bold yet vulnerable and therapeutic. But Raye’s vulnerability is never self-absorbed. She turns it outwards, offering a final promise to the listener on Happier Times Ahead before the credits roll: “Just hold on to happier times, alright darlin’?”
Some critics have found the result “overstuffed with musical ideas” and at times “over-indulgent and messy”. Yet I hear an artist making full use of the freedom long denied to her, and to many women in music.
Increasingly, women are seizing creative control of their music. Some of the most acclaimed albums of recent years have been ambitious, story-driven records by women. Most prominently, these include Beyoncé’s 2025 Grammy-winning Cowboy Carter, a reclamation of the black female lineage in country music, and Rosalía’s Lux, a stunning meditation on female divinity sung in 13 languages.
These artists are not only powerful vocalists and performers, but creative directors of conceptually rich musical worlds. On This Music May Contain Hope, Raye claims that role for herself.
Eva Dieteren receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), through the Techno Doctoral Training Partnership.
