Audiences watching the 67th Grammy Awards were treated to special performances by the Best New Artist nominees, including Benson Boone, Doechii, Teddy Swims, and Shaboozey. But the grand finale, accompanied by a small orchestra, a band, and a gospel choir, was none other than RAYE, adorned in a stunning dress. After appearing everywhere from The Voice UK to Glastonbury Festival, the BRIT Awards, the Royal Albert Hall, and Saturday Night Live, she finally made it to the crown jewel of the pop music world.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m gonna tell you ’bout / One of the many men, name is irrelevant, height is irrelevant / He was a one out of a ten, I wish that I knew it then,” she sang on the Grammy stage, launching energetically into “Oscar Winning Tears.” as the audience erupted in cheers and applause. As the opening lyrics suggest, the song isn’t a celebration about winning a trophy at a prestigious awards show. RAYE had been sitting on this song for years before releasing her debut album in 2023. She wrote the song after she caught an ex drugging her drink. According to the singer, once he was found out, the man wept like he was putting on “an Oscar-winning performance.” That was when RAYE reached her breaking point. She refused to stay silent about violence and abuse and decided she had to channel it into her music. And now, she stands tall in the very heart of pop culture.

Today, RAYE is the world’s most celebrated superstar. With her 2023 debut album My 21st Century Blues, the first time she was able to put out a record under her own name, she earned seven nominations for the 2024 BRIT Awards—the most prestigious awards show in her home country—and wound up taking six home, setting a monumental record. Among her accolades were major wins like Album, Song, and Artist of the Year, plus Best New Artist. That’s the equivalent of a full sweep at the Grammys, when an artist wins Record, Song, and Album of the year, plus Best New Artist, simultaneously.

Last month at the Grammys, RAYE was similarly nominated for Best New Artist and Songwriter of the Year, solidifying her reputation in the US music industry on the other side of the Atlantic. She toured under the name of her album for two years to promote it, performing alongside artists like Lewis Capaldi, SZA, Kali Uchis, and Taylor Swift. Most notably, she opened for Swift at Wembley Stadium in London during her incredibly successful Eras Tour. RAYE’s inclusion in BBC’s 100 Women last year now feels like a foregone conclusion.

RAYE’s talents are awe-inspiring: She writes all her songs, sings jazz and R&B with a voice that could command any room, and has her finger on the pulse of what the new generation likes to hear. Anyone who knew her for the trip hop hit “Escapism.” with 070 Shake, which reached the Billboard singles chart, surely can’t help but marvel at her latest album, featuring tracks like “Oscar Winning Tears.,” the bluesy “Mary Jane.,” and the funk guitar-driven “The Thrill Is Gone.”—not to mention the pure scale of her live performances. And that’s just the first half of the album. The second half is likewise overflowing with hits, with the dancehall/Afrobeats rhythm of “Flip A Switch.”, more trip hop from “Body Dysmorphia.”, and her unbelievable collaboration with Mahalia, “Five Star Hotels.” This musical variety on display here isn’t the stock everything-but-the-kitchen-sink we’ve seen time and time again—it’s proof of her next-level artistic talent, and she takes it to an entirely new dimension. From discovering her passion for music at a local church at age eight to honing her craft as a songwriter in studio sessions throughout her teenage years, the incomparable RAYE of today is the result of years and years of dedication.

Another song that highlights RAYE’s ambitious attitude is her 2024 single “Genesis.” The trend in pop music may have shifted to songs under three minutes in length, but here, RAYE boldly pushes the needle to a whopping seven. Soaring the skies of jazz, R&B, and hip hop before landing on a gospel closer, RAYE remarkably enough began production on the song shortly before her debut album was released. It was crafted in three acts with the help of big names like gospel composer Marvin Hemmings and famed producers Rodney Jerkins, Shankar Ravindran, and Tom Richards. RAYE draws inspiration from legendary singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and Nina Simone, as well as contemporaries like Lady Gaga and Christina Aguilera, and shows off her mastery of hip hop conventions, plus her fluency in blues, gospel, and even music from the big band age.

This all raises the question: Why did such a talented, multifaceted artist wait until 2023 to release her debut album? The truth is, like her fellow Grammy nominees for Best New Artist, RAYE already has a lot of experience under her belt. She marked the beginning of a decade-long journey in 2014 when she released her first EP on SoundCloud at just 17 years old. She dipped her toes into the professional world of music soon after, collaborating with Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander. Once she signed on with Polydor Records, she was well on her way to realizing her dreams of becoming a singer. But then, her label outright dismissed her immense talent. Polydor forcefully pigeonholed her into being a backing vocalist on electro house songs, which were commercially successful in the early-to-mid-2010s. Her early jobs working with DJs like Jonas Blue, Jax Jones, David Guetta, Major Lazer, and Martin Solveig meant taking part on songs that soared on the charts but that did little to establish her as an artist in her own right. She even provided her creative services for free to artists like Little Mix, Rita Ora, John Legend, and Charli xcx. Along the way, she also had the honor of working on Beyoncé’s song “BIGGER,” which appears on The Lion King soundtrack.

And yet, despite all that, Polydor remained cold toward the singer-songwriter. After RAYE’s 2021 single “Call On Me” underperformed, the label informed her that she couldn’t release her debut album. In a series of tearful social media posts, she echoed the pains of indie musicians everywhere during the pandemic: “For the last seven days I have woken up crying my eyes out, not wanting to get out of bed and feeling so alone. … I have been signed to a major label since 2014 … and I have had albums on albums of music sat in folders collecting dust, songs I am now giving away to A-list artists. … Imagine the pressure of me waking up every day frantically looking at numbers and stats hoping that I can just make my bloody first album.” After she finally broke free from Polydor, RAYE founded her own independent label, Human Re Sources, in 2022, able to work on music under her own name at last.

RAYE’s 21st-century blues are a procession of pain and tears. They reveal a suffering musician who did everything to claw her way out of anonymity and into the limelight, only to be repeatedly crushed by the cold, single-minded goals of the industry. As she says in one interview, hers is a battle cry that has “stood the test of time.” Her story is one of survival: endless self-doubt, seeking strength in substances, and getting used to eating disorders and all the sleepless nights.

Everything she sings about really happened to her—her struggles in “Hard Out Here.” (“I’m about to have these grown men crying … See for girls like me from the bottom of the tier / Believe that it’s always been hard out here”), her drug addiction in “Mary Jane.,” the pressure on women to achieve an hourglass figure in “Body Dysmorphia.” The most personal track on the album is “Ice Cream Man.” and her harrowing experience of being sexually assaulted by an unnamed producer: “Everything you did, it left me in a ruin / And no, I didn’t say a word, I guess that proves it / I’m a woman, oh yes.” RAYE doesn’t shy away from her darkest memories. She refuses to back down, facing the turmoil of living day-to-day among horrible people head-on and refusing to carry a sense of regret over the days when she’s felt completely numb. It’s the same source of strength that’s on full display when she performs her ethereal trip hop song “Escapism.” live, backed by a band and singing with a chorus of women who’ve all survived their own horrors over the years.

Where we see the world of music focused today is on stories of survival. When we hear about minorities who stand tall to overcome having to submit to the establishment that has a chokehold on power structures, the endless frustration and compromises, and having the ego broken and scarred, we feel a sense of hope and courage in the face of a society that’s growing darker by the day. Whether it’s Chappell Roan making her way back after being dropped by her label and refining herself in her hometown to achieve the American Dream—or Doechii sobbing on YouTube after being let go from her part-time job, only to come back and prove you can survive anything, even being attacked by an alligator, if you just pull yourself together—the world is captivated by these survival stories.

And at the forefront of this tectonic shift is RAYE. As a woman of color, she spent ages dealing with obscurity and struggling along, and has now emerged victorious. As a survivor, fighter, and philosopher, her music resonates with listeners thanks to the unstoppable power she puts into it, exploring everything from her deepest wounds to the breakdown of society in the social media age, climate change, and even politics. “They said my career was over and now I’m holding my seventh BRIT Award,” RAYE proudly posted on social media on March 1, after the awards show, “and I’m singing at the Oscars tomorrow.” Such is the power of the survivors singing the 21st-century blues.