DORÉ

I am so happy to share with you the very intimate conversation I had with an artist I truly admire and a friend that I truly love, Corinne Bailey Rae. We were sitting in a lovely room overlooking the outdoor garden at Narcissa in The Standard Hotel in the East Village. Corinne is a musician and a songwriter – you probably know one of her songs. Do you remember “put your records on?” – and she has just released her third album, The Heart Speaks In Whispers.

As a musician, I’ve had the chance to see her through some of her creative process and see how strong and inspired she is. As a friend, she’s the type of person that makes you ask yourself all the time: is it possible to be that graceful in everything you do? And to find out that yes, it is. Some people are like this, here to bring to the world some peace, some warmth, some love, and some beautiful music.

I’ll let you hear Corinne’s story, the magic moments and the hardships, and I’m sure you will be as inspired as I am.

[podcast_episode episode=”235049″ ]

On knowing that music was going to be a career…
I started a band called Hellen when I was 15 with my two best friends and my boyfriend at the time. Just the fact that you could think of a song, go and practice in someone’s bedroom or living room, and then go into a bar or club and stand on stage and play it, and the audience actually believed it was a real song…We’d do shows so often that we didn’t have recordings but people would be able to sing along and know it from the last time we were there. It was weird that people thought these were real songs when they were just songs we had made up, but then I started to realize, well that’s all it really is! It’s all just making up stuff.

On the evolution of music…
The records have really been spaced out. The first album, it was all about buying records. They were like there is this thing called iTunes, but we don’t know if it’s going to take off. The second album was all about downloads. And this time around it’s all about streaming.

On the joys of traveling…
Garance: After your first album, did you tour the world?
Corinne: Yes, we toured the world for a long time. The first time we played in Paris it was for 200 people, and the next time it was 500 people, and the next time it was one thousand people, and then the next time there were 2 or 3 thousand. So that was really great to see how all of that works, to go in and see if people are interested, and then you go back and do a TV show, and that sort of thing happened in lots of different countries all over the world. And it took a lot of time and I loved it because I didn’t travel as a child and I didn’t see the world, so going to Japan, Canada, Germany was a real thrill.

On finding oneself after heartache…
In 2008 Jason, my husband passed away really unexpectedly, which was like everything ended then… When you’re married you weave your lives together and so there is a lot of looking at it and figuring out what part of this is me, what part of this is him. You start looking at all the pieces in your personality. Even what food you like. You grow so close together so you have to figure out who his friends are, who are mine, what are the things I like to do, so it was a lot of unpicking and stuff.

It was almost like the sounds had been turned down on the world and it became this different world, everything was very quiet, everything was very slow. I’d been used to being so busy, and I remember just looking at the calendar and thinking “how long is this going to last? How long is this feeling going to last?” And the idea that it was going to be forever was just an impossible thing to take in, and just thinking, “what is left of my life?” After a while, I started picking up my life and writing music again.

On finding love again…
I feel like music is such a big part of me, it’s like another language and i’ve always felt drawn in that way to musicians because it would be hard to express that part of me without being with someone who totally gets it. Steve was a really old friend of mine and we worked together on The Sea and it was an amazing thing to find that we were fully in love with each other after so long of being friends, and that’s just been a total joy. I think getting to that point where I could feel myself again and happy again and fulfilled enough to find love, that was a really amazing thing.

On happiness…
I feel like it’s so easy for us to hold happiness away from ourselves, so you say “when I get that great job I’ll be happy” or “when I get a partner I’ll be happy.” You make all these provisos in your mind about what happiness looks like for you. But I love the idea of ritualizing and celebrating the moment, not waiting for everything to be perfect, just do it! Don’t think, “oh when I get a new kitchen I’ll have my friends around for dinner,” just be there! In the mess, in the chaos, in the pain, that is life. If you’re waiting for your life to be perfect, you’ll never arrive at that point.