Already off the UK album chart, RAYE’s huge ‘This Music May Contain Hope’ should be resurrected by Christmas. He has plenty of material: among the ballads, we would bet on ‘I Know You’re Hurting’. Among the lively ones, she has already chosen the euphoric and joyful ‘Joy’.
The song that unites RAYE with her two sisters, Amma and Absolutely, both singers and also backing vocalists on her tour, is a joyous example of a trotting rhythm, very Michael Jackson-like winds and a Motown-inspired sound. All this combining gospel choirs with a sample of ‘Damn Right I Am Somebody’ by Fred Wesley & The JB’s not so easy to locate.
In ‘Joy’, which in the album sequence comes after the long storm, RAYE declares that he is not going to suffer anymore and that now he only wants joy in his life: after all night “crying”, in the morning a new day arrives. The gospel influence leaves such spiritual passages as “Cover me with Your feathers, Father / Shelter me with Your wings”, although RAYE maintains the universality of the message.
With a launch on Wikipedia announced in the past for September 22, a date that has not yet arrived, ‘Joy’ already has, of course, its own video clip, which makes you smile from the first seconds.
The video, starring RAYE and her sisters, follows the trio around London aboard the Joymobile, surprising people with sunflowers and capturing their reactions. ‘Joy’ is an electric shock in song form, a shot of joy that arrives just when ‘This Music May Contain Hope’ needs it most.
