It looks like Raye’s second album may be delayed. She’s revealed that her songwriting books, on which she had outlined the songs she intended to record for her follow-up to My 21st Century Blues, has been stolen.
And, even worse, it happened on her birthday - 24 October - when she turned 27. In an Instagram post, she wrote: "It’s my birthday and my car got stolen with all my songwriting books in the boot so no second album any time soon love you bye."
The Tooting-born singer also included a picture of her birthday cake, which had been iced in red lettering to say "sorry ur car got stolen".
As you can see from her pics, it doesn’t seem to have spoiled her birthday too much. She’s obviously in a nice beach location, and there are flowers. And more than one cake. It could be worse.
Still, losing the notebooks must be annoying. Her fans seemed sympathetic, with many joking that they would endeavour to find the missing car themselves. “Operation find Raye’s car …. NOW!!!” one follower posted. Whilst another said: “I’m starting my own investigation, we need that album.”
“Y’all we gotta find that car,” one fan chimed in enthusiastically. “I NEED the second album.”
“Girl we need to get your car back I am fuming,” another added.
Though this incident may provide a roadbump, Raye’s career had finally been flourishing after many slow burning years. She released her first single back in 2016 and new material, both her own singles and features, dripped steadily over the next five years. But Polydor were reluctant to release her debut album, prompting Raye to leave the label and release My 21st Century Blues independently.
The album finally saw light of day in early 2023, reaching Number Two, and Raye was the big success story of this year’s Brits, picking up six of the seven awards she was nominated for.
She’s not the first artist to lose work-in-progress this way. In 2022, Lana Del Rey revealed that she had lost a laptop containing songs for a new album, as well as a book manuscript, in a smash and grab incident in her native Los Angeles.
We hope they find the rotter who stole Raye’s car. Or at least the thief gets a pang of conscience and returns her notebooks. After all, they're not much use to them, Are they?
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