Rock bottom, for RAYE, has immaculate production value. On THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE., her second record, she renders despair beautiful in Parisian noir, adorned in a crimson dress, waterproof mascara, and Jimmy Choos that click-clack on wet cobblestone. The British singer narrates her heartbreak with a Bridget Jones charm: She’s seven Negronis deep, listening to Édith Piaf, indulging in a piece of chocolate cake. Even the thunder arrives on cue, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra. This is curated melancholy, a 73-minute melodrama where sorrow is filtered through an Old Hollywood lens until it sparkles. “I’ll be sad and beautiful,” she pledges on “Winter Woman.,” and for the duration of the record, she never breaks character.
There’s a reason behind this drama queen’s theatrics. Before My 21st Century Blues made RAYE the first woman to win Songwriter of the Year at the BRIT Awards, she spent seven years at Polydor watching her songs get shelved or handed to others. She’d had success with some singles, but claimed her label wouldn’t let her release a full album—so she left, and released her debut independently. Finally she held the microphone; this follow-up is the sound of someone who has decided she will never hand it back. In a pop industry that rewards front-loaded hooks, TikTok-ified bridges, and short runtimes, RAYE chooses to be inconvenient. She lets 17 tracks sprawl across four season-themed acts, favoring slow builds, spoken-word tangents, and four-, five-, six-minute songs that save their plot twists for the end. Some listeners might skip ahead. Their loss.
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Sometimes, the most useful thing you can say to someone in the dark is that everyone is in it with you, too. This is, more or less, the album’s thesis: It’s a sad world, but we’re all going to die eventually, so it’s going to be alright. To make that medicine go down easier, RAYE costumes her fatalism in a baroque maximalism. “This is a sad song/Though it feels happy/It is not happy at all,” she sings in the third act. She robs the listener of the chance to figure it out themselves—but for the record, I never mistook this for a joyful ride.
RAYE moves through genres—jazz, orchestral pop, R&B—with the range of an Oscar-winning actor. One moment she’s belting show tunes; the next, she’s a distant echo in a Fred again..-style pulse. The arrangements sample Aretha Franklin, Fred Wesley and the J.B.’s, and Vivaldi. Hans Zimmer appears at one point. So does Al Green, her grandad Michael, and sisters Amma and Absolutely. While her classical training makes her tributes feel authentic, her 21st-century wit gives them new life. And when the emotions start to feel cosmic, the lyrics stay grounded: WhatsApp calls, Lime bikes, and petrol-station cigarettes. It sounds like the self-authored spectacle of a 28-year-old woman aware she’s romanticizing her own wreckage. She feels the pain; she also thinks, This would make a great movie.
