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.
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.
Still, aestheticization has its limits. Like many an overhyped Broadway or West End production, several tracks offer a thrilling show, but I wouldn’t sit through them again. “I Hate the Way I Look Today.” commits so hard to swing-jazz vaudeville that its self-loathing feels like a bit. “The WhatsApp Shakespeare.” begins as a “Bills, Bills, Bills”-esque anthem but buckles under the literary metaphors, dramatic monologues, and big-band curveballs that transform it into a campy tragicomedy. And throughout the album, RAYE has a tendency to perform past the curtain call. The frequent spoken-word interludes would feel less performative at a live show, but often take you out of the moment on the record. It seems RAYE is unwilling to leave anything on the cutting room floor, even if dialing back the razzle-dazzle could forge closer connection to the music.
But the peaks often justify the adventure. “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!” is brassy, big-band energy and cartoonish desperation dialed to 11, and it never wavers. “I Know You’re Hurting.,” the six-plus-minute centerpiece, earns every second. Where RAYE usually uses humor to deflect, here she sits through the pain without a punchline, patiently holding vigil. It’s the sound of a loved one who sees right through your curated exterior and refuses to let you hide any longer.
THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE.’s last full song (excepting the end-credits sequence “Fin.”) is “Happier Times Ahead.,” a promise RAYE makes with the knowledge that not everyone is buying it. Hope, for her, is a daily decision made against the mounting evidence of gloom, a decision the album’s grandiosity makes audible. To critique the pageantry would be to miss the point: The sadness is spectacle, and we shouldn’t hide from the depth of our experiences or the eternal promise of optimism. If you can’t see that, you might be—as she might put it—just another “South London Lover Boy” who simply can’t handle all of Rachel Keen.
On the opener (which comes only after a scene-setting spoken-word piece), “I Will Overcome.,” RAYE reiterates: “This is a song to remind me, since I needed one.” She won’t rest until she knows that you hear it, too.
