RAYE returns as an independent artist, releasing her first new solo music in over a year with ‘Hard Out Here’. It’s been a year since the 24-year-old south Londoner blew up her career in order to rebuild it. Frustrated at the fact she’d been continually denied the chance to release her debut album by her then label Polydor – despite more than 12m monthly listeners on Spotify, seven top 20 singles and four Brit award nominations to her name, plus songwriting credits for the likes of Beyoncé, John Legend, Little Mix and Charli XCX that have landed her more than 2.5 billion global streams (!) – she sent a series of tweets that shone a light not only on her own struggles but on the plight of female artists caught in an endless loop of faceless dance features and broken promises.
It was in that emotionally febrile period between posting her tweets and later being released by Polydor in July 2021 that RAYE started working on ‘Hard Out Here’, the barnstorming, emotionally raw new single that finds her alchemising pain and frustration into an in-your-face capital-A Anthem. // Continue to the full article
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