Corinne Bailey Rae celebrates twenty years since her 2006 debut with her album played in full and career hits, with special guest Laura Mvula.
Corinne Bailey Rae plays the Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday 27 October, with Laura Mvula as special guest. It's a night built around a specific anniversary: twenty years since Bailey Rae's self-titled debut arrived in February 2006. She'll play that album in full, and then work her way through the rest of her career with hits from the years that followed.
That debut was a bit of a moment. It made her the fourth British female act to have a first album enter at number one, and 'Put Your Records On' and 'Like a Star' went on to sell over four million copies. The record came after she'd studied classical violin and fronted the indie band Helen while reading English at Leeds. She was born in Leeds in 1979 to a father from Saint Kitts and Nevis and an English mother.
Since then, her work has moved in a few different directions. After the death of her husband, the musician Jason Rae, in 2008, she released The Sea, which was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2010. She's won two Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for Herbie Hancock's River: The Joni Letters, and Black Rainbows earned her a second Mercury nomination in 2023. The set on the 27th pulls from all that ground, with the debut played in its entirety alongside songs from across her career.
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Laura Mvula opens the night. She's a Birmingham composer whose debut, Sing to the Moon, was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2013. The show is at the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington, with doors opening at 18:45.
