\n
Sophomore studio albums\u2014especially by pop artists who broke through on their debut\u2014often fall into the \u201chere\u2019s more of what you liked\u201d variety. But sometimes an artist cashes in the check of their success to make their \u201ceverything I ever wanted to do\u201d album.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s definitely the path Raye is taking on This Music May Contain Hope<\/em>, her studio follow-up to 2023\u2019s internationally acclaimed My 21st Century Blues. <\/em>She again fuses pop, R&B, soul, and jazz, but this is Raye\u2019s big swing: 17 songs, presented in four acts, with guest stars ranging from legends to family members, and multiple orchestras. This album not only<\/em> contains hope; it features every emotional and musical idea it can muster.<\/p>\nMore from Spin:<\/p>\n\n\n(Credit: Aliyah Otchere)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
It\u2019s thrilling to hear Raye boldly try new things on each song. The fun, declarative spirit found on the album\u2019s first single \u201cWhere Is My Husband!\u201d is present throughout, but its big, brassy throwback pop-soul is practically conventional compared to the rest. \u201cI Hate The Way I Look Today\u201d uses 1940s boogie woogie to joyfully express modern anxieties. \u201cJoy\u201d is a celebratory spiritual meets a dance floor banger featuring her real-life sisters, while \u201cGoodbye Henry\u201d is classic Al Green-style \u201970s soul actually featuring Al Green. \u201cClick Clack Symphony\u201d is a percussive anthem of female solidarity that feels ready to score a Hollywood dance number (in part because she\u2019s collaborating with famed film composer Hans Zimmer). All this genre-hopping is held together effortlessly by Raye\u2019s voice, as she brings whatever\u2019s needed\u2014Modern R&B! Classic opera! Theatrical patter!\u2014with complete confidence.<\/p>\n
Every song goes for everything, making the album exciting, expansive,and also\u2026 unwieldy. From its title to the table-setting opening track \u201cIntro: Girl Under the Grey Cloud,\u201d it seems like Raye wants this album to be taken as whole. But in this context, it stumbles for me. This isn\u2019t a narratively clear concept album like Lily Allen\u2019s recent West End Girl<\/em> or a consistent character study like Mitski\u2019s latest. It\u2019s a sprawling collection of individual songs that are only tenuously connected by a shared message of not giving in to life\u2019s darkness.<\/p>\nIf I\u2019m supposed to take this in as one 73-minute experience\u2014as I did on my first listen\u2014the music\u2019s fearless adventurousness becomes overwhelming, almost exhausting. Each song seems to have an extra moment\u2014a 4th-wall breaking intro, a spoken word outro, a second bridge\u2014that feels like a hat on a hat, or even a hat on top of two hats. Like when the previously mentioned \u201cClick Clack Symphony\u201d continues past its propulsive first two-thirds into what feels like a movie\u2019s late second act meditative montage. Or how \u201cI Know You\u2019re Hurting\u201d gradually builds its musical and vocal layers for a touching, empathetic plea across four minutes\u2026 then adds even more bombast for two more minutes.<\/p>\n\nAnd yet, writing \u201cit has too much\u201d makes me feel like I\u2019m the emperor in Amadeus<\/em> saying the work has simply too many notes. While I might prefer a more refined and edited version of this album, what\u2019s here is truly, uniquely Raye. Her strength as an artist is maximalism. Does it get messy? Sure, but she also finds connection points between different styles and eras, like a living time machine, while always keeping it grounded in earnest emotion. You can feel that her exploration and experimentation comes from her heart, not her brain.<\/p>\nSo my recommendation is what I did on my second listen: Hear the album in batches of two to three songs. Because as individual songs, there\u2019s so much to enjoy. \u201cWinter Woman\u201d and \u201cNightingale Lane\u201d are equally moving yet distinctly different takes on heartbreak. \u201cSkin & Bones\u201d is a body-moving mockery of \u201cU up?\u201d texts.\u00a0 \u201cLife Boat\u201d is the positive rave-up I\u2019ll reach for the next time I\u2019m feeling down.<\/p>\n
Maybe the ambitious sprawl is ultimately the hope Raye\u2019s latest is bringing to our times. When many pop songs cut straight to the chorus and seem designed to merely continue their artist\u2019s momentum, it\u2019s refreshing to see an artist strive for more and more and more.<\/p>\n
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sophomore studio albums\u2014especially by pop artists who broke through on their debut\u2014often fall into the \u201chere\u2019s more of what you liked\u201d variety. But sometimes an artist cashes in the check of their success to make their \u201ceverything I ever wanted to do\u201d album. That\u2019s definitely the path Raye is taking on This Music May Contain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2351793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[456464,456465,346976],"class_list":["post-2351792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-click-clack","tag-pop-artists","tag-raye"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Rayes-New-Music-May-Contain-Multitudes.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2351792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2351794,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351792\/revisions\/2351794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2351793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2351792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2351792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2351792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}