Corinne Bailey Rae is set to sail on a new journey in her career with the release of her new album The Sea on Febuary 2, 2010, it was announced Thursday.
The singer, 30, whose husband Jason was found dead in March 2008, has spoken of how she has channeled her grief into some of the new songs.
"I hope you guys will like it and be into it," she says in a video on her Web site. The Leeds-based singer also says she co-produced the new record and promises "some hints" of the new work and behind-the-scenes footage will come to the site.
Rae's 2006 debut song "Put Your Records On" sold 4 million copies. Prior to the February release of her album, she will perform some new shows in the U.S., as well as a November 23rd London concert.
Singer Corinne Bailey Rae is using music to help her move though the grief of losing her husband Jason – spending much of this year gradually returning to work, writing and quietly playing low-key gigs.
Her 2006 song Put Your Records On was a massive hit, and now the young widow says she feels "impassioned" about her new songs and wants to pass that feeling on to her audience. "I don't think there is anyone of my generation saying these things, singing about these things," she tells the U.K.'s Observer Music Monthly.
She adds: "And it happens, you know. It can happen to anyone at any time. I want to be out there on stage with my hands out going, does anyone else feel the same way?"
It has been an intensely difficult road since Jason Rae was found dead in March 2008. A coroner ruled that the saxophonist, 31, who played in Mark Ronson's band and sometimes toured with his wife, had died following an accidental overdose of methadone and alcohol.
"I did think I could never do this sort of thing again because if anyone asked me about Jason, I would just explode," the singer, from Leeds, England, says. "For a long time, I didn't even try and write. It was just too big a thing, too raw."
Eighteen months on, Bailey Rae's return to the studio has seen her pen a series of heartfelt songs including two about her loss. She says the one called "Are You Here," was "one of the songs that just came through. It was like I was wishing him here. It's a song about grief and loss and that's really what the whole record is about."
Bailey Rae admits she had tried to get back to work and record some songs too early. "I laugh now at how deluded I was. I felt like everything would somehow go back to normal if I got on with things but, in reality, I was still in shock," she told the OMM Sunday.
Now, she is looking ahead. Later this year she will showcase the new set of songs in some concert dates and the as-yet-unnamed album is set for release in early 2010.
Corinne Bailey Rae is set to sail on a new journey in her career with the release of her new album The Sea on Febuary 2, 2010, it was announced Thursday.
