Exclusive:'This is a place I can be myself': Songbird Corinne Bailey Rae talks Leeds, Leeds, Leeds

“Even just trying to explain where the city is and what it's so I feel like I'm often advocating for the city and saying, ‘It has these amazing dance schools. It has these amazing colleges.

“It's got these brilliant universities. It's got the amazing diverse community which is quite sort of integrated and it's near the countryside. It's got this industrial past. It's got a great creative scene, So I feel like I'm always on the Leeds tourist board kind of thing.”

Corinne is in a relaxed chatty mood and this writer is keen to know what the city means to her.

“I feel like a lot of people know me but because there's no kind of novelty, so I feel like it's not a place where loads of people come running up to me on a night out or that sort of thing. I feel like people turn around and be like, ‘yeah, there's Corinne again.’ I'm always here.’ Or someone's always got ‘my cousin went to Brownies’. There's always a link. So, I think I feel very protected here. I feel like it's a place that I can be myself and relax and, sit in a restaurant, go out dancing, any of that stuff.”

You detect an empathy as she talks pointing out and championing the city’s multi-culturalism as well as its rich history and heritage. She also seems acutely aware of a two speed city made up of haves and have nots.

“If I was showing someone around, I would start at the city centre, and I would start with the architecture. It's like looking at the Town Hall and how beautiful that is and going in and seeing that massive organ and seeing all the statements wound around the ceiling there and how has this industrial past, but it's got these kind of aspirations to be this fair city, and then look at the different charities, the ones that work with women who've experienced sexual violence or the ones that work with children and, look at the tower blocks and look at somewhere like Alwoodley or a Far Headingley and sort of see that there is a decent amount of inequality in our city.

“I would take them to Chapeltown and show them the history. It's like look at this former synagogue which is now a contemporary dance school which is started by a teacher who used to look after all these amazing Caribbean boys who went on to found their own dance company and now brings kids from all over the world, says Corinne, 46. “It's like there's these layers of heritage. You kind of have to look at the buildings and the people and the culture. Chapeltown is where my dad and his family came when they came from St. Kitts.”

She pauses then reflects: “It'd be great if they could come on a day that's a carnival and see who Chapeltown communities are, working class white people and young seats and Muslim people and Caribbeans and Polish people and everyone just being part of watching that parade go by and then seeing all the different cities where people come from and to make bit that carnival happen. I just think there's so much history here. It's a really fascinating place like Harewood House and Canal Gardens at Roundhay Park.”

“I mean, I really love the Victoria Quarter and all around there. I think it's really lovely. but go as a cafe I like to go to Bare, which is in Headingley. Do you know Bare? And then I like Bottle Chop. But also Waywood Wines in Chapel Allerton.

“I like little places where you can just sort of stand up and you have a drink and you don't know you're going to be there as long but then you give you a plate of butter beans and some meat and some cheese and then I just like those kind of places I don't know fairly well.”

Corinne is keen to reflect on the city’s live music venues which shaped the soundtrack to a generation of people.

It is clear she has a nostalgic affection for the legendary The Duchess of York on Vicar Lane which closed in 2000

“It's so sad to me that Leeds hasn't held on to that historic venue of the Duchess of York. it's just a chain fashion store now. And I feel like that with so many things. It was such a vibrant scene the 1990s and the Town and Country Club with the Underground underneath where I used to work. That was such a classic venue for jazz and had international artists.”

Corinne performed at the Duchess with Helen, the indie band she had formed at the time, on the day it closed forever in March 2000 with Chumbawamba bringing decades of music history to an end.

“I mean, it was brilliant the way the room was set out. You always started out with a sort of hardcore in front of you, but then it was before the Internet. So people came to that pub for a drink and then they'd be standing at the bar,” she remembers.

“You could see from the bar, but not that well, but you could hear from the bar. So a good night, which this is what's always happened with our band or when we play festivals. It's like the audience starts off a certain size and then as the songs go on, people wander through. So you had that thing of like you and your friends who were all, underage or whatever or your mums and dads. That would be the first few rows, but as the gig wore on, people would wander in with the drinks and be just sort of checking it out and they would stay and more people and more people would come.”

She added: “So by the end it was a sort of hot sweaty room of people you didn't know and then the front bit of people you did know. But I always absolutely love it and I say to people, if you don't enjoy playing to 80 people in a pub, you're not going to enjoy playing to 20,000 people at a festival because It's the same feeling of bearing your soul or vulnerability or If you don't get the thrill from 80 people in a room, then it don't expect it to kick in, once it gets to Glastonbury or whatever. It's the same feeling. So, I remember the highs of playing at the Duchess were the same as playing in a massive festival because you're really doing it. You made it up in your bedroom. They're hearing it. They think it's a real song. They're singing along. They've paid the £3. It meant that it was real and I think for me that The Duchess was a start.”

Helen broke up a after deal with Roadrunner Records fell through when the band “casually announced that their bass player was having a baby.”

It was time for Corinne to forge a path as a solo artist and was invited down to London to write songs and landed a publishing deal.

“I managed to get a publishing deal, which meant I could stop my jobs. I was working at Harvey Nichols in Leeds,” she said. “I could stop working there and I could just concentrate on music and it was quite a small amount of money but I could live off it for a year and so I just started writing songs with all these different producers and those songs became my first record.

“And then when we had it, I got a production deal with Gary Davis at Good Groove. And then they sort of walked me into a label deal with Universal.”

2026 marks 20 years since Corinne’s debut album went straight to number 1 in the UK and became the fourth female British act in history to have her first album debut at number one. It has sold more than four million copies.

It spawned timeless global hits like ‘Put Your Records On’ and ‘Like A Star’, earning critical praise as well as Brit Award and Grammy nominations.

And for Corinne, life would never be the same again.

“I mean it changed in a massive way because I was suddenly quite well known and also that music was my job. It was my entire focus and the record did really well straight away which I wasn't expecting it to do.”

She remembers: “I was in an airport in Switzerland when I heard that the record had gone to number one and I was doing promo for the record, and I think it was Steve Chrisanthou (record producer) who rang me. I was I just can't believe it, this is amazing. But I was also aware of the labour that was happening to kind of put the record. So it's I thought brilliant. It's number one in the UK, but since last week, I've been in France promoting it. I've been in Germany promoting it, I've been in Italy promoting it. Now I'm in an airport in Switzerland. it was kind of like there was a lot of work to be in front of people. So, it was almost like I didn't really take it in. I was just like I remember meeting Dave Gilmore and he said, " sorry I knocked you off number one after the second week, but then you went back up on the third week.’"

In celebration of the anniversary next year Corinne will be performing the album in full at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Tuesday, October 27, 2026.

“I'm playing the whole of the first record, which I haven't actually done since probably 2007,” she says enthusiastically. “ I think that will be the last time where I've played all of those songs. So, it will be a big musical adventure for me to revisit the songs, to really give them their space, to be able to talk about them, talk about the stories of how they came about, what they've been about, I felt like those records were about my life.”

This interviewer is fascinated to know whether Corinne has enjoyed a stand out ‘I’ve made it moment’ in her career.

“I think it all the time,” she admits. “I was at Wayne Shorter's 80th birthday. He had a concert and he was raising money for a documentary he was making and we're in Los Angeles and we're outside and I was on stage with Terri Lyne Carrington, Esperanza Spalding, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter and I just was like they to be in that company to be sort of requested and required and appreciated by people like that like you say it's the pinnacle in terms of a kind of acceptance.

“But also in terms of the experience, it was so high to play with people like that and to just kind of get caught up in their updraft, their sort of level of musical skill, So I have no more sort of idols to meet and more sort of aspirations or nothing. I'm kind of trying to grasp for I mean except that I want to make great songs.

“That's really my thing that I want to do. So that's the thing that sort of motivates me is like okay I want the song to be good right? What's this song about? what's the texture? what's the subject matter? how is this useful? Is this new? Is it so that they're the things I guess and I want to be a better performer.

“So that drives me. But live. I love the connection with the audience. It's always special. It's always transcendent. but yeah, I've had many moments like that, I just was on stage with Stevie (Wonder) this summer, playing and that's my third or fourth invitation, I just think it's great to be thought of, that there has to be a point where you say, this is very very special.“

And finally what advice would you give an up and coming artist trying to navigate their way in the industry?

“I'm very very grateful and a normal day as you know it's a normal day as well so I think the most important thing as an artist is to really be yourself. I think you can easily get caught up with kind of chasing what other people do. It's like listening to radio finding out what's really becoming popular and think, should I change my thing to be more like that or to be more like this?

“But I feel like developing your own identity as an artist is really important. listening to your strong likes and dislikes, listening to your comfort and discomfort and, being feeling like you're being yourself. I think that's the most important thing. and just writing a ton of songs. writing is really important.”