Corinne Bailey Rae: Leeds singer opens up on her new tour and how she juggles stardom with two young children

“There’s nothing like performing in front of a home audience,” says the 43-year-old mum of two.

She spent lockdown at home in Leeds with her second husband Steve Brown and their two small children, the youngest of which was born just before lockdown.

“When I finished travelling in 2019 I decided that I was going to take 40 days off. I’d just had my second daughter and I wanted to make the most of time with my children. But then lockdown happened and 40 days turned into months and months. Somehow being told you aren’t allowed to see people or go anywhere is far harder than making that decision yourself.”

Like most people she quite enjoyed the initial lockdown.

“It was nice not to be travelling all the time and to spend time with the family but I had a newborn and so it was hard not to be able to have people round to the house and introduce her. I was only able to leave my house once a day for a 20-minute exercise.”

It’s one of the first times since she began touring life that she’s been in the same place for almost two years. She has a studio in her home so she wasn’t completely devoid of music making.

“I had a whole host of things that were pulled including a US tour. We were going to spend some time in Aruba afterwards but none of that happened.”

But a surprise remake of her 2006 hit Put Your Records On meant Bailey Rae managed to enjoy some royalties while being unable to perform. Ritt Momney’s version became a TikTok hit and introduced Bailey Rae’s music to an entirely new generation .

Bailey Rae first shot to fame when, at the start of 2006, her eponymous debut album, featuring the hit singles Put Your Records On and Like a Star, reached the Number One spot in the charts. She was part of a new wave of British female singer-songwriters that included the likes of Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, her apparent overnight success actually the culmination of several years spent honing her talents. She had been in an indie band since her school days at Allerton High School. The eldest of three sisters, she grew up in Leeds and stayed with her mother when her parents divorced when she was 12. Her father is from Saint Kitts and Nevis and her mother, Linda, is English.

She sang in church choirs but admits it wasn’t her kind of music back then. By the time she was 15 she had set up her own indie band. “Everyone I knew seemed to be in a band and a lot of the pubs like Joseph’s Well, the Duchess (of York) and the Duck and Drake had band nights.”

She continued with her music while studying English Literature at Leeds University, and the songs that tumbled out of her led to a record deal with EMI in 2005.

The following year she was all over the airwaves, not that she has ever hankered after fame and adulation.

“I want the music to be heard but I’m not interested in fame itself and I never wanted to be famous as a persona.”

Bailey Rae, perhaps, is most famous for Put Your Records On and Like A Star, off her debut album. But since then, she’s released other albums including The Sea in 2010, after her first husband unexpectedly died. In March 2008 tragedy struck when her husband of seven years, the respected jazz saxophonist Jason Rae, was found dead at a friend’s flat in Leeds. At the inquest the coroner delivered a verdict of death by misadventure, an accidental overdose of alcohol and drugs.

She has spoken of her grief of losing Rae in the past but now prefers to look to the future with Brown, who she had known for years, and their two small girls. The Sea, was nominated for the coveted Mercury Music Prize and became a top five hit in the UK. She followed this up with an EP called The Love, which picked up a Grammy, before promptly retreating from public view

Her next album six years after the Sea was The Heart Speaks in Whispers in 2016, after she met and married Brown. She is currently working on another solo album, along with a side project influenced by archives of African American sculpture, literature and history at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago. It is something she is clearly very passionate about and it is also something lockdown allowed her time to pursue. And she continues to tour. Her UK kicks off on April 20 appearing at the Leeds O2 Academy on Monday April 25 before heading back out to America, Canada and Brazil singing the music she loves and taking her family with her.

Her four-year-old daughter has already been to a host of countries. Her mother Linda also travels with them. “It’s a total joy to be there with three generations of my family,” said Bailey Rae. “To see my kids in the crowd at a festival; it feels really like winning, if you can manage to do the thing you love but have a family as well.”

She has just been touring America with fellow British singer song-writer and new mum Joss Stone and that’s a new experience for her two year old. “It was so great to tour with Joss,” says Bailey Rae. “To be on the road again with another family was great. It was such a shame when Joss got Covid and we had to cut it short. There are so many artists who take their children with them these days. It is easier when they are really young, but having my mum with us really helps.”

Having been unable to travel or play to a live audience for two years, Bailey Rae said it was incredible to be back on stage.

“It was really beautiful to look out and see the audience,” says the star. It was definitely different than before the pandemic. Every single person who was there had had to have a test and was taking a bit of a risk to be there in a crowd of that size and I really appreciated that. It felt an honour to be able to perform for them and was very moving. You could hear them singing along. It was so beautiful to be back with my band making music in the same room.”

While recording more of her own songs she is keen to do more collaborations. And while loving her career she knows how precious it is to spend time with her girls playing in the park or just taking them swimming.

Corinne Bailey Rae is at Leeds, O2 Academy on Monday April 25 www.MetropolisMusic.co.uk