RAYE's Sophomore Album This Music May Contain Hope Arrives March 27

There's artistic growth, and then there's the radical transformation of RAYE." That line, from Rolling Stone's perfect-score review by Nick Levine, captures what the South London singer born Rachel Keen has pulled off on her sophomore album, This Music May Contain Hope, released today via Human Re Sources.

The album is a concept record about overcoming self-doubt, heartbreak, and what Rolling Stone calls "hollow Romeos," running 71 minutes across a tracklist that includes a fourth song literally titled "The WhatsApp Shakespeare." The star suffered writer's block while working on it, making its sheer scope all the more striking.

RAYE pulls off crackling funk on "Skin & Bones," recruits Al Green for the silky soul ballad "Goodbye Henry," and demonstrates on "Life Boat" that she can still write a club banger. The single "Click Clack Symphony" features beats mimicking the thwack of high heels on a hardwood floor alongside crashing instrumentation from Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer. The album pings between jazzy toe-tappers like "Beware... The South London Lover Boy" and "I Hate the Way I Look Today," grandiose ballads including "I Know You're Hurting" and "Nightingale Lane," and florid string sections evoking Hollywood's golden age.

The Independent called it "an epic Technicolor movie of an album," praising RAYE for leaning hard into the romance of vintage Hollywood melodrama while keeping a witty, modern head on her shoulders. The review enumerated its stylistic range: trad and cocktail jazz, blues, pop, sax solos, Prince-indebted power balladry, silky neo-soul, chamber music, funk, house, hip-hop, and accordion-backed chanson.

The album's arrival follows a remarkable commercial run for its lead single. The 2025 Mike Sabath-produced "Where Is My Husband!" hit No. 1 in the U.K. and climbed to No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking the highest-peaking solo song of RAYE's career. That performance built on the momentum of her debut, My 21st Century Blues, which was Mercury-shortlisted in 2023 and helped her become the first artist to win six BRIT Awards in a single year. The breakthrough came after RAYE detonated her major-label deal with Polydor in July 2021 and re-emerged as an independent artist.

The album launch coincides with a sprawling live campaign. RAYE's 51-date arena tour, titled This Tour May Contain New Music, includes six sold-out nights at London's O2 Arena on Feb. 26-27, March 1-2, and May 19-20, with North American dates at Radio City Music Hall in New York on April 15-16 and the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on May 12-13. Her younger sisters, Absolutely and AMMA, are serving as her support acts throughout the run.

Beyond her own tour, RAYE will join Bruno Mars' The Romantic Tour as a special guest for 27 stadium shows across the United States this summer. Rolling Stone named her own trek one of the most anticipated tours of 2026, with music writer Larisha Paul noting, "The British songstress has an affinity for big band music and grand dramatic displays both onstage and in the studio... A master entertainer and a true musician, Raye knows how to put on a show."

RAYE also competed in the Best Music Film category at this year's Grammys with her Live At The Royal Albert Hall concert movie. Between a perfect-score Rolling Stone review, a Hall of Legends collaboration with Al Green, and Hans Zimmer writing orchestral parts for a pop record about bad dates, the sophomore album has arrived with few precedents to point to.