Raye’s record-breaking Brits defied the limited imaginations of the British music industry

Raye’s six Brit awards marked a huge vindication for the newly independent artist and rightly shamed the major label that apparently couldn’t see her potential

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If Raye was lost for words when she won her first Brit award of the evening, song of the year, then – other than begging the music industry to award songwriters points on master recordings – she had certainly almost run out of them by the time she tearfully collected her sixth award of the night for album of the year, which saw her “ugly crying on national television”. The British pop star had already broken the record for the most nominations in a single year with seven nods – two of them in the category for best song, plus the latterly announced best songwriter. Then she broke the record for the most wins in one year, a joint title previously held by Harry Styles, Adele and Blur with four apiece. Styles’s 2023 sweep was a celebration of his global dominance; while Raye hasn’t achieved anywhere near the same commercial or international reach, her near-clean sweep reflects the creative innovation of her debut album, last year’s My 21st Century Blues, a record whose brutal candour and skilful flexing between rap, R&B, dance, pop, soul and big balladry make her a worthy peer to this year’s best international artist SZA – another genre-straddler – and to former British solo female artist winner Amy Winehouse. Raye, AKA 26-year-old Rachel Keen, wasn’t recognised at all at the Grammys last month, making her feel like a particularly homegrown success story – although her victory also represents a gigantic failure for the British music industry that couldn’t recognise her talent during the seven years that she was signed to Polydor.

In 2021, Raye posted a tearful plea to social media saying that her label had denied her the opportunity to make even one of the four albums on her deal, and that dozens of what she considered potential hits – among them the No 1 single Escapism, tonight named as the year’s best song – were languishing on a hard drive. Instead, she was trapped in guest-vocalist purgatory, singing on generic bangers by the likes of David Guetta and Jax Jones. The history of aggrieved female pop stars agitating against their labels has not historically ended well – just ask Britney Spears and Sky Ferreira – yet astonishingly, Polydor freed her from the deal and Raye went it alone as an independent artist, working with label services company the Orchard. She wrote much of her long-overdue debut album by herself, as well as co-producing all but two songs: it hit No 2 and scored her a Mercury prize nomination and an Ivor Novello win. That Polydor were apparently unable to imagine Raye’s considerable potential beyond the realm of the sticky-floor nightclub banger should prompt extremely hard questions about major-label A&R practices and the other young women inevitably being held back by their bet-hedging.