Corinne Bailey Rae Shares Rare Comment on the 2008 Death of Her Husband

Corinne Bailey Rae gave a rare comment on the death of her husband Jason Rae.

In a recent interview with Billboard, the “Put Your Records on” hitmaker, 46, spoke about how her late husband’s death shaped the making of her second studio album, The Sea, which came out in 2010.

Released two years after Bailey Rae’s husband of seven years died of an accidental overdose at the age of 31 in 2008, the album chronicled her journey through grief and shared glimmers of hope and healing. 

“When I look back at [debut LP Corinne Bailey Rae], it’s on the other side of… not a wall, but a divide between my two adult lives,” she told the publication. “That moment [Jason’s death] felt like the end of what that first album term was.” 

Added Bailey Rae, “I felt like my life was divided between the before and after of that.”

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In a 2016 interview with PEOPLE, Bailey Rae shared how she found healing after the death of her first husband. 

“When you’re in a relationship with someone, it’s so much about tearing down the walls between you two that you sort of confuse what is you and what is them,” she said. “When you lose them, you question: ‘What is left of me?’” 

Bailey Rae continued, “There was no specific turning point. Imagine silence, and then slowly the volume gets turned back up on life.”

The British pop singer explained that she turned to Yoko Ono, who was widowed when John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, for a sense of hope. 

“I’d see interviews of people who’d been widowed. I’d be looking at the picture of, like Yoko Ono, thinking, ‘Does she look happy?’ And I’d look and think, ‘She does; she looks happy.’ Just the possibility that I could, in some distant point, be happy meant a big deal to me.”

Bailey Rae, who remarried in 2013 to producer Steve Brown, spoke about finding love again. 

“If you aren’t comparing the person you meet to the person you lost – and that’s a definite stage – you’re not thinking about what has come before, you’re just thinking about the newness,” she noted. 

Added Bailey Rae, “I knew [Steve] as a friend for so long, and I’d gotten to know his family really well. So once we were really ready, I felt that I could just dive deep into it.”

The singer also shared with Billboard that she’s working on new music. 

“That’s the thing I’m really excited about, is trying to work out what the sound and direction is, what I want to say and who it’s going to be with,” said Bailey Rae. “I feel really inspired right now, and Black Rainbows [her last album] has really freed me into not overthinking things – that’s been really important.”