Corinne Bailey Rae felt “sad” about the texture of her voice until she heard Billie Holliday and Kurt Cobain.
The 47-year-old singer has enjoyed huge success in the music industry thanks to tunes such as Put Your Records On and Like a Star, but initially wasn’t keen on the tones in her singing voice.
She said: “[I felt sad about my voice] because it had all this texture.”
However, when she heard tunes from stars including Billie and Nirvana frontman Kurt, she realised the unique talent she had.
She told CBS’ Sunday Morning: “It was like, ‘You are welcome in this space’. Their songs don’t necessarily have to be, you know, shiny and perfect.
“And that just made me feel like I could be in music.”
Put Your Records On – arguably Corinne’s most famous tune – was only her second single release.
But she admitted she had no idea just how successful the song would become.
She said: “With that first record, I wasn’t thinking like, ‘Oh, this is gonna be – ‘ Like, I had no idea that it was gonna be successful in that way.
“We made it in a basement studio with no windows. So, it wasn’t like I went in with a certain kind of ambition. I just wanted to make the songs work.”
Corinne’s life hit a standstill when her husband and bandmate Jason died of an accidental overdose in 2008.
She struggled to deal with the “huge amount of pain” that followed, until she released her second album The Sea – in which she detailed coming to terms with Jason’s passing.
Due to the fact she now considers her life to have two parts – the before and after Jason’s death – she considers rebirth a big theme for her.
She explained: “Because there’s a possibility, every single time, of starting again.
“You know, any age and any space, you can sort of hit reset and do it again and go back into the fire, transform, and be out as a new thing, you know, every single time.”