After shining a light on her journey as an independent artist in her Billboard cover story, RAYE attended Billboard‘s Indie Power Players event in New York City on Tuesday (June 9) for a well-earned victory lap.
Related
After accepting the Indie Spirit Award from Billboard‘s co-chief content officer Jason Lipshutz, the British singer-songwriter took the podium at The Cutting Room in Manhattan and gave a moving speech chronicling her trajectory as an artist. Touching on many of the points highlighted by her cover story in Billboard‘s Indie Power Players issue, she spoke about wanting to be a musician since she was 10 years old, signing with former label home Polydor Records and experiencing throughout her contract the frustration of dealing with “people out there — in suits, sometimes — who think that they know best, who think that they get to look you in the eyes and tell you, ‘This is your ceiling.’”
“I just want to encourage us to ignore those lies,” she continued, shouting out J Erving — who was in attendance — for believing in her music and signing her to a distribution deal with The Orchard’s Human Re Sources when every other label and company she met with thought her “music was too complicated and weird.”
The celebratory night also included awards honoring Rubén Blades and Orchard founder Richard Gottehrer. RAYE also got to sign a poster of her first-ever Billboard cover, which went live in May and found the star also reflecting on her experiences with mental health, trauma and dating.
After closing out her This Tour May Contain New Music headlining trek in late May, RAYE is now gearing up to open for Bruno Mars on a run of stadium tour dates. But first, she’ll play a much smaller venue than the ones she’s become accustomed to as of late, performing an intimate set at the Blue Note Jazz Club in NYC for Billboard‘s Indie Live event on Wednesday night (June 10).
Below, read RAYE’s full speech, available to watch above.
I first want to just thank you for this honor. I’ve just been eating a lot of burgers recently, so I’m trying to suck in and look elegant. If I sound out of breath, that’s why.
Look, this is not a simple business. This is not a simple industry. This has not been a simple journey, but one that actually, maybe, sitting from this seat that I am now, maybe I wouldn’t change anything.
I’ve been very vocal in the past about spending seven years at a major record label. When I was a young girl — I was 10 years old — I turned to my dad in the school playground, and I said, “Dad, I’m going to be a recording artist.” That’s what I said. I was 10. Dad looked at me. He was like, “OK.” I was like, “Dad, no Plan B. This is it.”
I come from a place called Croydon in South London. We didn’t have any connections, we didn’t have any way in. Just a normal girl from a normal family in a normal town in a normal place. But what I did have for some reason — and I think it’s something that all of us artists have to have in common — is the audacity to dream audaciously. I don’t know why I believed that I could pursue music. I just fell in love with it, the craft of songwriting, and I dedicated every waking moment of my life to just figuring out how to make it work.
When I was a kid, you think, “Right, the steps I need to take is sign to a record label.” So that’s what becomes, “This is what I need to do.” But it turned out, when I did sign to a record label, it wasn’t everything that I had sadly hoped it would be. In fact, it was a lot of what I now want to call … I want to encourage all of us artists or anyone in this industry, there are people out there — in suits, sometimes — who think that they know best, who think that they get to look you in the eyes and tell you, “This is your ceiling.” Who get to look you in the eyes and tell you, “This is all you’re ever going to amount to. This is all you’re ever going to be able to achieve.” And I just want to encourage us to ignore those lies. You dust those things off, you give yourself a pep talk. And I’m so grateful, my dad is my manager, and he’s also my best friend and the sweetest guy in the whole world, and he will be like, “Rachel, you can’t let this get you down. You’ve got to keep going.” He’ll give me some football analogies, and then we’ll go at it again. It’s this tenacity to continue to dream audaciously.
So I’m so grateful that when I went independent, and I was looking for a home, I found Human Re Sources and J Erving at Human Re Sources — sorry, I said it twice. I haven’t written a speech, we’re just speaking from the heart right now. But yeah, J was the only man who liked my album. I went everywhere, I mean to every major label, every indie space, anyone who would take a meeting with my first album called My 21st Century Blues. Everyone thought the music was too complicated and weird and whatever, but J loved it, and I’m so grateful he did.
J believed, and it was such a beautiful moment, I’ll never forget it. Everyone was kind of whispering that my career was over, whispering that and kind of laughing at me once we’d shared our first two single releases, “Hard Out Here” and “Black Mascara.” You could feel it, you know? But I was like, “You know what?” Dad encouraging me in my ear. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is art, making good art, because that’s the only thing we can control. It’s the only thing we can control as writers, creators — you can’t control anything else other than your art. So I’ll never forget the day “Escapism” come out, and three weeks later, just started going like this. Since then, my life has just changed.
All those labels heard those songs. They said, “These songs aren’t going to go far. People aren’t going to understand this. People aren’t going to connect with it.” And if I’d listened to them, maybe I would’ve believed it. So I just want to encourage us to ignore the lies, ignore people that don’t need to have an opinion over what you are, who you can be and what you’re gonna do. You get to decide that. So let’s keep deciding to make art that inspires us. Maybe it’s seven minutes long, I don’t care. I like it, I believe in it, and that’s what I want to spend my life doing. I’m so grateful, so grateful, that after 14 years in this industry since I started as a songwriter at 14, I really feel like we’re just doing it now. I’m so grateful to J, Human Re Sources, The Orchard and independent artists, come on, let’s go! Thank you!
