Carly Glendinning chats to Corinne Bailey Rae about her debut children’s book
Put Your Records On might be best known as the feel-good anthem that launched Corinne Bailey Rae onto the global stage, but now its warmth and emotional honesty have found a new audience. Her debut children’s book draws on the song’s spirit to explore how music can help young readers understand and express their feelings, following Bea as she discovers the magic of a record collection and the comfort of sound.
Here, Corinne talks about translating a beloved track into a picture-book story, the role music plays in children’s emotional wellbeing, and the memories (from her own childhood to motherhood) that shaped the book’s heart.
Put Your Records On the song is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. How does it feel to see its spirit translated into a children’s story book?
It feels amazing to see Put Your Records On translated into this form of a book. I really see myself in Bea and the excitement of discovering records. That was how I really got into music, playing my dad’s 45s. He had loads of stacks of albums and 45s in our house. And I used to love going through his collection and sort of making a separate collection of songs that were my own, like Pick Up the Pieces by Average White Band or Masquerade by George Benson. The songs that really were intriguing to me and songs that I liked putting on. So I had my own little stack of records that I would put on at my house. And I love the story of Bea being introduced to her great aunt Portia’s record collection and finding, not only that a song could be a new friend for you, but that all the emotions you’ve ever felt are captured in a song somewhere or another.
Many parents are increasingly aware of children’s mental and emotional wellbeing. How do you hope this book might help children who are struggling to articulate how they feel?
I think taking time as a parent to let your child sit in their feelings is so important. I definitely think the culture used to be that you kind of jolly children along and not let them sit in sadness, you know, just say, oh, it doesn’t matter, or look, here’s a sweet, or, you know, here’s a new balloon, your balloon’s bursting. I think it’s good for children to sort of feel what they’re feeling and not try and find a kind of quick way out of it.
And that’s why I really love music, you know, I really love reading for that. You know, sometimes your kids are just blue and you can hold them and cuddle them up and just sit under a blanket and read to them and they can, you know, rest their head on you or they can fall asleep. I think it’s really important that we see that our children have got emotional needs and that there’s times in the day where there is a kind of stillness and slowness, they’re not at school, you know, they’re not sort of like sitting in front of a device kind of being blasted out, even if it’s something educational, you know, I think it’s great when you can just let them unwind and I find lots of different ways that are useful to do that, you know, being in the bath, being in water or playing with sand or playing with clay or, you know, guiding a paintbrush along a piece of paper. I think they’re all really useful ways for children to unravel their feelings and I think that’s really an important thing. And you know, music does that as well. Our music will hold children and hold their emotions, especially music that’s slow, even music that doesn’t have any words, I think it’s great to see them get up and respond to music, whether they’re dancing or swaying or singing along and when you find them singing the song independently of the record, you know, that it’s kind of gone into a deep place and that it helps them to kind of pin their feelings onto or help them to unloose their feelings.
I think the conversation about mental health in young people and children is very important and I hope that this book can be a small part of that conversation that parents can talk to their children about how they’re feeling and demonstrate that it’s okay to feel all your feelings. It’s okay to sit in sadness or anger or embarrassment or frustration or grief or all the more difficult feelings that we’re not trying to get our children past a difficult moment back into happiness and games and fun and that we’re saying that it’s okay for them to not just learn all of their feelings and that they come from something as a response to something. I think it’s important to help children to express what they feel rather than teach them to mask it for often the adult’s advantage or so yeah I think that this book could be play a small part in that conversation which is obviously very lively and necessary.
Are there moments from your motherhood journey that inspired Bea’s story, or the idea of music as a companion for feelings?
I reflected on my own motherhood journey a lot when I was making this book. I think it’s amazing how you get to kind of unfold the world to your children, you know, when you take them out to see even a park or a lake or the beach or a forest in places that you can put them in that are new to them that they’ve never seen before. And in the same way, you know, just think of a song that you love and realise they’ve never, ever, ever heard this one. And to be able to put it on and see their faces light up, it’s really an incredible thing. So I think of that, I think of Portia and the joy that she has in putting the needle on the record and watching Bea’s reaction for the first time and sort of being pulled back into the first time you ever heard a piece of music. I think children bring out that newness that you see things through their eyes and it’s like sometimes that you’re seeing things for the first time. I’ve really enjoyed that. Also with my touring, you know, going to places that I’ve been to before but seeing them the first time in a Korean temple or them the first time, you know, in Japan and seeing Tokyo and the busyness and the skyscrapers or being in Hawaii, you know, being on the beach or Australia that, you know, these places are incredible to me, but to a child, you know, for the first time they’re seeing these weird and wonderful animals I’ve never encountered before, it really makes it all new again.
What are some of the records, songs, or musical memories that have stayed with you from your own childhood?
Lots of musical memories from my childhood. My childhood was a lot like this moment in Bea’s life where she finds Portia’s record collection. I grew up with my parents’ record collection, especially my dads. There were a lot of 45s, so individual songs on vinyl, and the covers for those records were just cardboard. They didn’t have any illustrations on or any writing. The only way to really get to know those songs, find out what was on them, was to actually put the records on. That was what I used to like doing at my house. I remember the feelings of lying on the white wool carpet on sunny days and putting these records on the record player and seeing if I enjoyed them. I got into quite a few Stevie Wonder songs that way. I really liked The Secret Life of Plants, which was a full album rather than a 45. I loved tracing my fingers over the braille and hearing this sort of modern sounding tech music, but at the same time it felt very earthy. I loved hearing those songs, and then just individual singers. I remember liking Rainy Night in Georgia or Pick Up the Places by Average White Band. Then other songs came to me in different ways. I used to watch Top of the Pops a lot and be really inspired by seeing people sing on there. Mel and Kim, all those kind of stock aching and waterman songs, as well as all the music. Michael Jackson, obviously a big part of our childhood in the 80s, and Whitney Houston. So I used to enjoy when they had a song out and we’d get to listen to that on the radio. Yeah, that was really important for being able to dance around the room.
And what kind of music do you love to listen to with your own daughters?
We listen to all sorts of music with our children. You know, they pick up things from their friends, so they want to hear about films that have come out, and we’ll get the books from those. So they’ll definitely sing along to Moana. You know, the songs from Moana they absolutely love. As do I, you know, I think Lin-Manuel Miranda is a really talented writer. But also we love introducing them to music that is ours. You know, we love playing them. Stevie Wonder songs, or we love playing them. Aretha Franklin, or, you know, songs from the 80s. We love playing them, things that are from our ear and from our childhood, and the richness of that. We’ll play them like a James Brown record, or, you know, things that just have so much musical pulse that they can dance to, or that are very alive. You know, we really like to play music that has instruments in, and, you know, where the vocals not crazily auto-tuned, so you can hear all these human beings reacting to each other in a moment. It’s so special, I think, for children to hear that. And it’s easy for them to pick it apart and hear, oh, the guitar’s doing this, or the drums are doing this, and as they go on and learn their instruments and get into dance as well. So, we play them a real mixture of things, you know. Some, I guess, starting in the 1930s and going right up to now, so it’s fun when the songs come around, we realize they’re listening to a hundred years of music, and I think that’s really great.
And finally, if a little one takes just one thing away from this story, what do you hope it is?
If a little one takes just one thing away from this book, I hope that it will be that music is a safe place to put your feelings, that every single thing you felt has been felt by someone before. It makes you realize that your feelings are valid, that your feelings are normal, and that you have a place where you can put them, whether you need to dance it out or to cry or to be held by a safe adult. Music is like a blanket that can wrap you and help you to feel what you’re feeling and help you to know that it is an important part of being a person, having all these feelings, this rainbow of emotions.
Put Your Records On by Corinne Bailey Rae and illustrated by Gillian Eilidh O’Mara is on sale now (Fox & Ink Books/£8.99)
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