Corinne Bailey Rae presents Black Rainbows

To say that Corinne Bailey Rae was inspired by her visits to the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago does not do justice to the profundity of her experience. She was transformed. I knew when I walked through those doors that my life had changed forever, she says.

The two-time Grammy winner began writing the songs for her newest release Black Rainbows before she’d even left the Arts Bank, from her first visit in 2017. She continued tinkering with them up until early 2023 saying with a laugh I finished the last bit of recording the day before we sent it to be mixed …I’m always thinking of ways I can make it better.

Black Rainbows feels very much like a work of trapeze artistry as Bailey Rae flings herself from song to song, firmly grabbing each successive bar to keep the flow consistent as she sings of beauty queens and the enslaved; churches embedded in the rock of the earth, and outer space.