Where is her husband?! Raye on her hit song and five-year plan to start a family

Where is her husband?! Raye on her hit song and five-year plan to start a family

Glastonbury, summer 2025. Raye is wheeled onto the Pyramid Stage in a giant flight case marked "Caution, contents may be fragile."

Freed by two tuxedoed roadies, the pop star teeters to her microphone in a black sequinned ball gown and does the worst thing a performer can do - plays a brand new song.

"When I think about it now, that was really bold," she laughs.

I got out of that box and I was like, 'No-one knows this. Everyone hates it, everyone hates it!'

Not quite. Because the song was Where Is My Husband!, a blistering pop-funk throwback that became an instant earworm.

Fans streamed the Glastonbury performance 1.2 million times while they waited for an official release. When the single finally came out last week, it entered the charts at number four.

The insanely catchy bridge – where Raye longs for "a diamond ring I can wear on my wedding finger" – has also gone viral on TikTok.

So... has it resulted in any concrete offers?

"Someone wrote their number on a tissue the other day and I was like, 'Oh no, you're just not my type'," she guffaws.

He was really sweet, he just wasn't my vibe.

Still, for all of the song's sass and flippancy, Raye is deadly serious about snaring a partner.

"I have a five-year plan," she says. "I'll put out an album in first half of next year – although I need to finish it first - then I'll tour with my sisters.

"Ideally, around that time, it would be nice to meet my husband. So like, maybe 2027? Then we get married and have a baby.

And I want to do enough groundwork in the next two years that I can take a year off and my career's not gone down the toilet.

It's a startling admission - a year after winning a record six Brit Awards in a single night, Raye still worries about the precarious nature of success. And, like many women, there's a fear that maternity leave will damage her career prospects.

It doesn't help that she's been scarred by her past experiences with a record label that, for almost a decade, pushed her into making generic dance records while refusing to release her debut album.

That's also why, having finally broken free, she's keeping a close eye on her younger sisters Lauren and Abby-Lyn Keen as they follow her into the music industry.

"I'm fiercely, fiercely, fiercely protective of my girls," Raye says.

"We have discussions about how to handle disrespect in a studio environment and learning how to navigate egos.

It's really, really hard, and sometimes people are very disrespectful, so we talk about it and cry about it and go through it together.

Lauren, who performs under her middle name Amma, says having Raye in her corner has already paid off.

Many of her friends have met male writers and producers who've diminished their contributions and made sexually inappropriate comments, she says.

"But because my older sister is Raye, it's like, 'No!' They won't move to me because they've already hit on you," she says.

The sisters laugh raucously, but there's an undercurrent of pain.

Raye was a teenager when she signed her first record deal, and experienced several instances of sexual abuse that contributed to a "dark, dark" period of drinking and drug-taking in her early 20s.

It was difficult [to watch] for a little bit of time," says Amma, gently touching her big sister's arm. "You were just struggling, I think.

Witnessing Raye's experiences in the industry – both the successes and the sorrows - ultimately stopped Amma from pursuing music "for a really long time".

It was only when her father played one of her songs to music publishers in Los Angeles that things changed.

Snapped up as a songwriter, she was working with R&B artists like Flo and Nao until a meeting about her next project took an unexpected turn.

"We were meant to be talking about other artists - and 20 minutes into the meeting, they pitched me becoming an singer," she recalls.

"I was like, 'No, no. That's not what I'm meant to be doing.'

But as I was driving home, I was like, 'Wow, this is the best I've felt on this [songwriting] trip. Maybe I am meant to be doing this?'

She got home, took a shower, and was hit by a sudden wave of inspiration. Sitting on her bed, she sketched out a song that weighed up the pros and cons of becoming a singer.

"Don't know if I'm really wanting the fame / Something tells me I'm a bit smarter than that," she sang into her tape recorder.

Ironically, it was expressing those doubts that convinced her to give it a shot. The song, called What Am I Doing It For?, it became the opening track of her debut EP, Middle Child.

Absolutely never had those doubts. She's been writing since she was 13 - and part of the reason for her new musical pseudonym is that she "never wants anyone to find" the EPs she recorded in her teens.

Quieter and more reserved than her sisters, her singing voice is no less breathtaking. Her latest single, a gorgeous, yearning ballad called I Just Don't Know You Yet, has been played four million times on Spotify.

Written two or three years ago, it shares its compositional DNA with Raye's Where Is My Husband!

"I was lying in bed one night, and I pray a lot," she explains, "and I had it really heavy on my heart to pray for my future husband.

Then I went into the studio the next day, and the lyrics came so effortlessly - just flowing out of my heart.

If it seems odd that these fiercely talented, independent women are so preoccupied with marriage, it helps to understand the overwhelmingly supportive and loving environment their own parents created.

The sisters talk glowingly about growing up in the embrace of the church, where their father would teach them piano and their mother encouraged them to sing in the choir.

But the biggest praise is reserved for grandma Agatha Dawson-Amoah, who moved from Ghana to help raise the family.

"She used to carry my cello home from school on her back while pushing me in the pram," reminisces Absolutely.

"Lauren would just be toddling along at the side and I'd be walking ahead, pretending I'm all independent," adds Raye.

"And we'd all be eating jam and cheese sandwiches," Amma laughs (the delicacy being a result of Agatha misunderstanding the composition of a ham and cheese toastie).

"Grandma was our best friend, and our rock," says Raye.

In fact, she even makes a cameo on Where Is My Husband!, promising the star, "Your husband is coming soon".

The song is projected to top the charts next week, and Raye is justifiably proud of the track - which she worked on right up to the wire, only delivering the final mix eight days before the deadline to get it pressed to vinyl.

It turns out the song had a troubled gestation as the pressure of following up Raye's Mercury Prize-nominated album 21st Century Blues hit home.

"When you haven't written for a long time, you start being extremely self-critical. So I was hating everything I was coming out with, and then I had to have a pep talk.

Mike [Sabbath, producer] and I went for a walk in the woods and talked about life, and did no work for a whole day.

The chorus for Where Is My Husband! arrived, unprompted, the next day.

It was so exciting," she says. "And then we just began chip, chip, chipping away at it.

Her sisters are totally enamoured with the song and spend a good few minutes trying to sing the tongue-twisting bridge before giving up and breaking into Sister Sledge's We Are Family instead.

They'll have plenty of time to perfect it next year, though, when the whole clan set off on tour together, apparently oblivious to the fact that most family road trips end in disaster.

Back in the day, we'd have war zones over hairbrushes," says Raye. "But now we're just very close.

So, could a joint album be on the cards? Maybe even a Christmas record?

"A gospel album would be better," says Absolutely. "Somewhere where we can experiment and have fun and push boundaries.

"I think it'll happen in like five or six years," Raye suggests.

Five or six?" Amma says, shocked. "I bet you money we're gonna do it before.

OK then," replies Raye. "Once I'm married and I've got my baby.

With a final, sisterly eye-roll, Amma sighs: "Oh my gosh, you and your baby!"

Tickets for Raye's “This Tour May Contain New Music” Tour - with support from Amma and Absolutely - are on sale now.

Source: BBC
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