Raye

It's been a year since multi-platinum U.K. singer-songwriter RAYE, the mononym for South Londoner Rachel Keen, blew up her career in order to rebuild it. Frustrated at the fact she'd been continually denied the chance to release her debut album by her then major label — despite more than 25 million monthly Spotify listeners, seven top 20 UK singles, and 4 Brit Award nominations to her name, plus songwriting credits that have clocked more than 3.5 billion global streams for other chart-topping acts like Beyoncé, John Legend, Little Mix and Charli XCX to name only a few — she posted a series of viral tweets that shed light not only on her own struggles but on the plight of female artists caught in an endless loop of faceless dance features and broken promises. 

A straight shooter, RAYE has always relished being a maverick. Brought up in a musical household (her dad and grandad were both songwriters), RAYE knew from an early age that she would carry on this songwriting lineage. At 14-years-old, RAYE decided she wanted to attend the Brit School, the creative hothouse that had helped shape the likes of Adele and Amy Winehouse, but left two years later to jump start her career. That same year, she released the independently-funded, blissed out Welcome To Winter EP on Soundcloud. 

In between penning songs, such as "Bigger” for Beyoncé’s The Lion King: The Gift album and “Bed” with Joel Corry & David Guetta, RAYE released a series of projects, including Second EP in 2016, Side Tape mixtape in 2018 and Euphoric Sad Songs mixtape in 2020. Her solo catalog alone has over 3 billion cumulative streams. She garnered early support from BBC Radio, The Guardian and Vogue, and continues to be championed by global names, including Bulgari, Christopher Kane and JW Anderson. Furthermore, she’s toured with Halsey, Khalid, Rita Ora, Years & Years and Jess Glynne.

Her new album, My 21st Century Blues, arrives February 3. The deeply personal 13-song body of work – touching on everything from RAYE’s painful experiences in the music industry to sexual abuse, rape, body dysmorphia, addiction, misogyny, and even climate change. 

RAYE will join Lewis Capaldi as special guest on his sold out Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Spent IE/UK arena tour in January prior to embarking on her own headline tour kicking off in Europe before playing five sold out North American cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Brooklyn in March. 

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