“Three little birds sat on my window..
..And they told me I don't need to worry”

And so began the song that would change then-25-year-old Corinne Bailey Rae’s life. Now on over a billion streams, Put Your Records On, and the US and UK number one self-titled debut album that followed, propelled her from jazz club hostess to a platinum-selling artist. Bailey Rae would go on to win two Grammy Awards (plus a further four nominations), two MOBOS, two Mercury Music Prize nominations and a BET Award. The world fell hard for Bailey Rae’s jazzinflected soul stylings, while in the UK she became the fourth female act in history to have her first album debut at number one in the US, selling over four million copies in the process.

That indelible opening lyric was a playful nod to Bob Marley & The Wailers’ Three Little Birds, and to celebrate the 20th anniversary of her breakout hit in 2026, both songs will find a new and unexpected audience via Bailey Rae’s latest project: a children's book. Beautifully illustrated by Gillian Eilidh O'Mara, Put Your Records On follows a young protagonist, Bea, discovering her great aunt's record collection. It’s a celebration of music’s therapeutic power and intergenerational bonds. “Would you like to hear a song that feels like sunshine?” asks Aunt Portia, before playing Bea Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds.

‘Music can take you on such a journey and help you understand your emotions,’ says Bailey Rae. ‘I have young children and I love the idea of a child discovering a collection of music like a secret garden. That you could open these doors and find so much art and so much feeling inside.’ Bailey Rae’s love of records reaches back to childhood, where her own collection spanned Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix and Mariah Carey. It’s fitting that, to celebrate Record Store Day in Spring 2026, she will release a reissue of 2007’s Live in New York album. Recorded at New York’s iconic Webster Hall, it features orchestral-backed versions of her chart-topping hits including Call Me When You Get This, Trouble Sleeping and Put Your Records On. ‘It felt like flying,’ she says of the shows. ‘Ever since being a teenager in a band, I get into a kind of flow onstage. It's transcendent.’ Bailey Rae will headline London’s famed Royal Albert Hall as a culmination of her 20 years Celebration throughout 2026.

In the formative years of her career, Bailey Rae introduced herself to the world as not just a musician but a lover and student of music. Nirvana soundtracked her adolescence; the honesty of Kurt Cobain’s voice and the DIY nature of the band stirred something in her, while discovering the songs of Billie Holiday when she was twelve gave her the confidence to pursue performing. ‘I’d always loved singing but I couldn’t get the sound out like Mariah or Whitney,’ she says. ‘Billie Holiday’s voice was a total revelation to me. It's conversational. It's got a lot of texture, she does this thing where she sort of bends up to the notes. I thought maybe I could sing.’

Here was a true artist in the making, born and raised in Leeds to an English mother and a father from Saint Kitts and Nevis, who themselves bonded over a love of soul music. Growing up, Bailey Rae cut her teeth in jazz clubs, abrasive punk bands, playing classical violin, singing in church choirs and playing in youth orchestras. Her dextrous approach to music helped her craft a unique sound that was innovative and contemporary, while remaining grounded in a rich musical history. After releasing her very first single Like A Star in 2006, critics were quick to draw the Billie Holiday comparisons, while the debut album moved through soulful pop and buttery R&B.

Her sophomore album, The Sea, came four years later, two years after the untimely death of Bailey Rae’s first husband, jazz musician Jason Rae. ‘I thought my life was finished. I couldn’t see beyond the grief,’ says Bailey Rae. But the album—nominated for the 2010 Mercury Music Award—proved cathartic, her grief, undulating and uncompromising, finding a home in song. Her pain is palpable, yet tracks like I Would Like to Call It Beauty, with swirling strings and swelling vocals, vaporise loss into a profound and timeless love.

2023’s Black Rainbows, her second Mercury-nominated album to date, pushed the bar with its radical sonic landscapes spanning thrashy punk riffs and distorted jazz, paired with subversive lyrical ingenuity. Inspired by her time at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, Peach Velvet Sky centres on the story of Harriet Jacobs, an abolitionist born into slavery, while He Will Follow You With His Eyes explores the concept of femininity as performance and the politics of Black beauty advertising. If the album preceding it, The Heart Speaks in Whispers, looked inward, Black Rainbows took on the world around her. Next year, Bailey Rae will release a documentary following the making of her seminal album.

Over the course of her career, Bailey Rae has continued to evolve her artistry. She has written music for film and TV throughout her career including the score for a contemporary piece inspired by stories of migration, Seeds, Dreams, Constellations in 2023. She has frequently collaborated with era-defining artists. She was invited to record a cover of One Night (of Sin) for Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino and won a GRAMMY for her collaboration on River: The Joni Letters, a tribute album featuring Joni Mitchell songs played by Herbie Hancock. She has opened for the likes of Prince, who also came to see her perform, and played with Stevie Wonder throughout her career, most recently in Summer 2025. Shortly after, she joined fivetime Grammy winner Angélique Kidjo on stage with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Committed to the arts, she is a patron for The Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Curator of the Cheltenham Jazz Festival and Artistic Partner at The Glasshouse International Centre of Music.

While 2026 will be a landmark year to celebrate Bailey Rae’s legacy, she remains focused on the future, with a world tour soon to be announced. Bailey Rae is back in the studio working on new music that draws from several touchstones of her illustrious career: fusing the jazz, soul and funk that have been the backbone of her artistic output with a lesser-known, experimental side showcased on Black Rainbows. ‘I’m so conscious of continuing to try something out,’ she says. ‘That indie, scrappy, independent, riotous, messy, rule-breaking thing is so much a part of me.'