The Sea is the second studio album by English singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae. It was released on 20 January 2010 by Virgin Records.
The album was conceived following Bailey Rae's hiatus from music, taken in the wake of her husband Jason Rae's death. She recorded The Sea at Limefield Studio in Manchester, England, during 2009, working mostly with a host of session musicians and the record producers Steve Brown and Steve Chrisanthou. It features songs written by Bailey Rae before and after her husband's death, touching on themes of love, lament and solace.
The Sea debuted at number five on the UK Albums Chart and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). It also charted at number seven on the Billboard 200 in the United States, where it had sold 156,000 copies by April 2010. A critical success, The Sea received mostly positive reviews and was nominated for the 2010 Mercury Prize. Bailey Rae supported the album with a concert tour in early 2010.
Writing and recording
Following the multi-platinum and award-winning success of her eponymous debut album in 2006, Bailey Rae began to work on songs for a follow-up album in late 2007. However, she took a hiatus from music, following the death of her husband, Scottish saxophonist Jason Rae, in March 2008 to an accidental overdose of methadone and alcohol. For a long period of time, Bailey Rae said, "I didn't really hear any songs. Normally in my everyday life, I'd be in the car and come up with a little line, or I'd look at something and try to describe it ... I didn't really think in that way anymore. Nothing was coming in." After months of grief and isolation, Bailey Rae revisited her work the following year and composed additional material for The Sea.
The Sea contains songs written before and after the death of Bailey Rae's husband, all of which she said resonated with her: "The circumstances have cast it all in a different light. It began as a 'before and after' record, but it's become an 'after' record." The ballad "I'd Do It All Again" was written by Bailey Rae in January 2008 after an argument with her husband. She told NME that writing the rest of the album helped her handle the different emotions she felt after her husband's death: "When I started writing that I was thinking, 'I don't really want this song to go into the world, 'cause it's so naked...' But I had to." "I Would Like to Call it Beauty", she said, was written about finding beauty in the "darkest times", later telling journalist Sean O'Hagan:
Bailey Rae recorded most of The Sea in 2009 at Manchester's Limefield Studio. She co-produced the record mostly with Steve Brown and Steve Chrisanthou, both of whom had worked on her debut album. Bailey Rae pursued a sound more aggressive than on her debut. During the recording process, Bailey Rae listened to Sly and the Family Stone's 1973 album Fresh and Curtis Mayfield's 1975 album There's No Place Like America Today, as well as the music of Nina Simone and Leonard Cohen. A live band was used in the album's recording, which was also a departure from her debut. "On the first album, it was me and a producer in a basement going through hundreds of snare drum sounds to find the right one," she recalled. "With a live band, you can stretch out more and try new things out without feeling you're having to undo this meticulously built-up track."
The album was titled after the recurring theme of water in songs such as "Diving for Hearts" and "I Would Like to Call It Beauty", while the music was said by Bailey Rae to possess "a kind of tidal movement to it too, in the way that we recorded the songs. You know, sometimes it would just be me and my guitar. Then we'd really sort of swell up into these big arrangements, only to then retreat back to it just being me and my guitar again." According to Chris Mugan from The Independent, The Sea was a departure from the polished sound of Bailey Rae's debut album, while Paste magazine's Steve Labate said Bailey Rae expanded on her debut's mix of contemporary R&B and older soul music by incorporating pop rock, singer-songwriter influences, and occasional elements of bossa nova and trip hop. In the opinion of Craig McLean from The Daily Telegraph, the record's music evoked Simone's singing and the 1968 Van Morrison album Astral Weeks.