00:00Every artist goes on a journey, highs and lows and triumphs and tribulations,
00:06but very few have a story, as Richard just suggested, quite like Ray's.
00:12This year's cover artist is a wildly talented singer and songwriter
00:17whose career faced years of trials and tribulations,
00:22the product of an imperfect major label system that she eventually rejected.
00:27The fact that she has gone on to score huge hits, play to sprawling audiences,
00:33and release one of the most ambitious albums of any genre this year,
00:38all as an independent pop superstar,
00:41is both a miraculous feat of professional reinvention
00:45and a foregone conclusion for an artist bursting with ideas.
00:50I've had the pleasure of covering this artist over the course of her career,
00:55and I could list her many commercial achievements and detail every new marker of success
01:01as detailed in our recent cover story written by my colleague Hannah Daly.
01:05Shout out to Hannah. She's right there.
01:09But what I want to highlight specifically is how Ray is compelling a new generation of voices
01:16to question the status quo, rethink the rules of popular music,
01:22and break through on their own terms.
01:26That type of inspiration is more meaningful than any single statistic.
01:32I'm very proud to present this year's Indie Spirit Award to the one and only Ray.
01:51Hello, everyone. How are we doing this evening?
01:56I first want to just thank you for this honour.
02:00I've just been eating a lot of burgers recently,
02:02so I'm trying to suck in and look elegant.
02:04If I sound out of breath, that's why.
02:09Look, this is not a simple business.
02:12This is not a simple industry.
02:14This has not been a simple journey.
02:18But one that actually may be sitting from the seat that I am now.
02:22Maybe I wouldn't change anything.
02:25I've been very vocal in the past about spending seven years at a major record label.
02:32When I was a young girl, I was ten years old,
02:35and I turned to my dad in the school playground,
02:37and I said,
02:38Dad, I'm going to be a recording artist.
02:41That's what I said. I was ten.
02:42Dad looked at me.
02:44He was like, okay.
02:45I was like, Dad, no plan B.
02:47Like, this is it.
02:50And, you know, I come from a place called Croydon in South London.
02:53I don't have no...
02:54I'm on South London to the world.
02:57We didn't have any connections.
02:59We didn't have any way in.
03:01We were just a normal girl from a normal family,
03:04in a normal town, in a normal place.
03:10But what I did have, for some reason,
03:14and I think it's something that all of us artists have to have in common,
03:19is the audacity to dream audaciously.
03:23I don't know why I believed that I could do, pursue music.
03:30I just fell in love with it, the craft of songwriting,
03:33and I dedicated every waking moment of my life
03:36to just figuring out how to make it work.
03:38When I was a kid, you think,
03:41right, the steps that I need to take is signed to a record label.
03:44So that's what becomes, this is what I need to do,
03:47this is what I need to do.
03:49But it turned out, when I did sign to a record label,
03:51that it wasn't everything that I had sadly hoped it would be.
03:56In fact, it was a lot of what I now want to call
04:02and want to encourage all of us artists,
04:05or anyone in this industry,
04:07that there are people out there in suits sometimes
04:13who think that they know best,
04:16who think that they get to look you in the eyes
04:19and tell you this is your ceiling,
04:22who get to look you in the eyes and tell you
04:24this is all you're ever going to amount to,
04:26this is all you're ever going to be able to achieve.
04:28And I just want to encourage us
04:30to ignore those lies.
04:33Because we, us individually,
04:37you dust those things off,
04:38you give yourself a pep talk,
04:40and I'm so grateful.
04:41My dad is my manager,
04:42and he's also my best friend
04:44and the sweetest guy in the whole world.
04:46And he will be like,
04:47Rachel, you can't let this get you down,
04:50you've got to keep going,
04:51he'll give me some football analogies,
04:52and then we'll go at it again.
04:55And it's this tenacity to continue to dream audaciously.
05:00So I'm so grateful that when I went independent
05:04and I was looking for a home,
05:06I found Human Resources
05:08and Jay Irving at Human Resources.
05:10I said that, sorry, I said it twice.
05:12I haven't written a speech,
05:13we're just speaking from the heart right now.
05:16But yeah, Jay was the only man who liked my album.
05:21I went everywhere.
05:22I mean to every major label,
05:24every indie space,
05:25anyone who would take a meeting
05:27with my album,
05:28my first album called My 21st Century Blues.
05:31And everyone thought that the music
05:32was too complicated and weird and whatever.
05:35But Jay loved it,
05:36and I'm so grateful he did.
05:42You know?
05:43And Jay believed.
05:45And do you know what?
05:46It was such a beautiful moment.
05:47I'll never forget it.
05:50Just everyone was kind of whispering
05:53whispering that my career was over,
05:56whispering that,
05:57and kind of laughing at me
05:58once we'd shared our first two single releases,
06:01Hard Out Here and Black Mascara.
06:04And you could feel it, you know?
06:06But I was like, you know what?
06:07Dad encouraging me in my ear,
06:09doesn't matter.
06:10What matters is art,
06:12making good art,
06:13because that's all we can control.
06:14That's the only thing we can control.
06:15As artists, writers, creators,
06:18you can't control anything else
06:19other than your art.
06:21So I'll just never forget the day
06:23when Escapism come out,
06:24and three weeks later,
06:25it just started going like this.
06:27And since then,
06:28my life has just changed.
06:29So all those labels heard those songs.
06:33They said,
06:34these songs aren't going to go far.
06:36People aren't going to understand this.
06:37People aren't going to connect to it.
06:39And if I'd have listened to them,
06:40maybe I would have believed it.
06:41So I just want to encourage us
06:44to ignore the lies,
06:46ignore people that don't need
06:49to have an opinion
06:49over what you are,
06:51who you can be,
06:52and what you're going to do.
06:53You get to decide that.
06:54So let's keep deciding
06:56to make art that inspires us.
06:57Maybe it's seven minutes long.
06:58I don't care.
06:59I like it.
07:00I believe in it.
07:01And that's what I want to spend my life doing.
07:03And I'm so grateful,
07:05so grateful that after 14 years
07:07in this industry,
07:08since I started as a songwriter at 14,
07:10I really feel like we're just doing it now.
07:13So I'm so grateful to you, Jay,
07:14Human Resources, The Orchard,
07:16and independent artists.
07:17Come on, let's go.
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