RAYE

Tooting, Polydor and seven years of features

Rachel Agatha Keen was born on 24 October 1997 in Tooting, south London, to a mother of Ghanaian-Swiss heritage who worked in mental health and an English father. She spent a short spell at the BRIT School, left it for professional studio sessions, and signed to Polydor in 2014 at the age of 17.

What followed was a decade built largely inside other people's credits. From 2016 she turned up on records by Jonas Blue and Jax Jones. 'Secrets', with Regard, came off the 2020 project Euphoric Sad Songs. 'Bed', with Joel Corry and David Guetta, reached the UK top three in 2021. She was a dependable hook on a club record and a songwriter working to other artists' deadlines. What she was not was an album artist, because the album she had made was sitting on a shelf.

Leaving the label, and the six BRITs that followed

Polydor withheld the debut for years. Keen left the label in 2021, signed to Human Re Sources in 2022 and released My 21st Century Blues herself in 2023. 'Escapism' became her first UK number one — the song that had been impossible to get made under the old arrangement turned into the one everybody knew.

The 2024 BRIT Awards closed the argument. She won six in a single ceremony, more than any artist had taken in one night, and became the first woman to win Songwriter of the Year. Two Ivor Novellos and four Grammy nominations sit alongside that, including the 2025 pair that made her the first artist nominated for Best New Artist and Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical in the same year. On 31 January 2026, at the Recording Academy's Special Merit Awards ceremony at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles, 'Ice Cream Man.' — written with BloodPop and Mike Sabath — received the Harry Belafonte Best Song For Social Change Award.

Seventeen tracks, seventy-three minutes, one Hans Zimmer

The second album, This Music May Contain Hope, arrived on 27 March 2026, again through Human Re Sources: 17 tracks running 73 minutes and 30 seconds, moving between jazz, orchestral pop, blues, big band and soul. The co-production credits include Jordan Riley, Chris Hill, Mike Sabath, Tom Richards, Pete Clements and Hans Zimmer. Al Green appears on it, as do her younger sisters Amma and Absolutely.

The singles ran ahead of it for eighteen months. 'Where Is My Husband!' came out on 19 September 2025 and went to number one in the UK, 11 on the US Hot 100 and six on the Billboard Global 200. 'Nightingale Lane' (27 February 2026) reached 20 in the UK. 'Click Clack Symphony', the Zimmer collaboration, reached 11 on its release on 20 March. 'Joy', with both sisters, followed on 7 September 2026.

Metacritic settled the reviews at 86 out of 100. The album became her first UK number one and also topped the charts in Belgium, the Netherlands, Scotland and Switzerland, reaching 11 on the Billboard 200. NME reached for the language of extravagant theatre; Rolling Stone called it a lavish 73-minute narrative; the Independent compared it to a Technicolor film.

Fifty-one nights with a string section

This Tour May Contain New Music was announced in September 2025 as a 40-date run and grew to 51 shows. It opened at the Atlas Arena in Łódź on 22 January 2026 with a 29-song set that took in 'Escapism', 'Bed', the new single and a cover of 'Fly Me to the Moon'. Europe ran to early March, North America from late March to early May, and the tour closed at the O2 Arena in London on 20 May.

The venue sizes swung hard from night to night — theatres of two to three thousand next to full arenas — with Radio City Music Hall, the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago and the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on the American leg. Her sisters Absolutely and Amma opened every date, each with a set of their own, before joining her for 'Joy'. Metropolis Music, SJM Concerts, DF Concerts and Wasserman promoted it.

At the O2, doors opened at 6.30pm and she was on stage by about 8.30, playing 22 songs that began with 'I Will Overcome' and ended with 'Escapism', with Sinatra covers and her old dance collaborations in between. Rolling Stone gave the London show five stars and described an arena show that segued between the bold and the intimate; the Guardian's four-star review made the same point about scale and closeness. The American shows were smaller in every sense: in Sacramento on 31 March a sold-out room got a mini orchestra rather than the European production, and a reviewer there noted the contrast between her independent status and the size of what she was putting on stage.

Reading, after the rejections

On Saturday 29 August 2026 she headlined Reading Festival for the first time, on The Grid stage at Little John's Farm, following Dave. She told the crowd from the stage that she had asked to play the festival before and been turned down.

The set ran 80 minutes and 13 songs with a full band including horn and string sections. It opened with 'Escapism' and closed with 'Where Is My Husband!', taking in 'Beware…The South London Lover Boy', 'Skin & Bones', 'Worth It', 'The WhatsApp Shakespeare', 'Oscar Winning Tears', 'Winter Woman', 'I Know You're Hurting' and 'Click Clack Symphony', plus medleys pairing 'Secrets' with 'You Don't Know Me' and 'Life Boat' with 'Prada'. Amma and Absolutely came out for 'Joy'. Dork called it one of the most unapologetically gleeful headline sets Reading has seen, and noted a largely post-GCSE crowd chanting 'it's going to be alright' back at her. The slot cost her a booking: she had been due to open for Bruno Mars in Pittsburgh the same night.

Where she stands in September 2026

Since the tour ended she has gone back to opening for somebody else, at a scale she has not worked at before. She is one of the rotating support acts on Bruno Mars's The Romantic Tour, alongside DJ Pee.Wee, Leon Thomas, Victoria Monét and Tyla. That tour runs from 10 April 2026 to 30 May 2027 across 127 stadium shows, after first-day pre-sale figures prompted 32 extra dates and a 12-show Japanese dome leg for 2027.

Her own diary through the rest of the year is mostly those stadiums: Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens on 19 and 20 September, the Alamodome in San Antonio on 23 September, Falcon Stadium in Colorado Springs on 26 and 27 September, SoFi Stadium on 2, 3, 6 and 7 October, Levi's Stadium on 10 and 11 October, and BC Place in Vancouver on 14, 16, 17 and 20 October. An Evening With RAYE at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles sits in the gap on 28 September. December takes her to Australia for Spilt Milk, at Carrara on 13 December and Claremont on 20 December.

No headline tour for 2027 has been announced.