This Music May Contain Hope is a lavish return from RAYE

The London Symphony Orchestra is credited for its striking horns and strings plucked straight out of a film score, paired with operatic background vocals.

Seamlessly, track one transitions into “I Will Overcome”, which blends the classical touches of “Grey Cloud” with more straightforward pop beats. “Like a Hollywood movie,” RAYE croons on the song, a bit of meta-commentary on the record itself. If it isn’t clear enough by then for whatever reason, the lyric lets the listener know that her latest opus is a big-budget blockbuster in album form.

Like many such films, everyone has something to say about This Music May Contain Hope; my take, I feel, is almost superfluous. While plenty have lauded the album’s scope and ambition, many others have also decried these very characteristics. Some have deemed the record overproduced and excessively commercialised.

The discourse reminds me of a certain film duology in particular: Wicked (2024–2025). Every time someone gets cynical about the Wicked films, I can’t help thinking about the nine million tulips planted in Norfolk just for them. But they’re corny, they say. The movies are soulless, they’re award bait, and the list goes on.

We’re all entitled to our own opinions, of course, and some of those criticisms are valid. Still…my mind recalls the nine million tulips, among other jaw-dropping production details. And with its lead stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s exceptional capabilities, I just can’t bring myself to honestly hate something bursting with both technical splendour and human creativity, despite flaws here and there.

I feel similarly toward This Music May Contain Hope. It probably has something to do with the fact that Wicked has roots in Broadway, while countless reviews – positive and critical alike – have compared RAYE’s latest opus to theatre.

The album is packed with dramatic orchestral and big-band instruments. Hans Zimmer is featured on “Click Clack Symphony.” Unsurprisingly, This Music May Contain Hope leans into RAYE’s (completely deserved) reputation as a powerhouse singer.

For instance, soaring rock-inflected ballad “I Know You’re Hurting” is a marvellous showcase for the richness and beauty of her voice. Another impressive moment comes four minutes into the bluesy “Nightingale Lane”.

She enters her flute-like upper range, as if she were performing an aria, before unleashing another one of her signature pop star belts. It’s an exquisite contrast that few others can execute so well.

However, the record’s focal point is the narrative. It unfolds not just within those impressive displays of vocal prowess, but also in the various spoken sections and lower verses sung with a conversational cadence.

This emphasis on storytelling gives This Music May Contain Hope its theatrical, larger-than-life qualities, but the tales being told are relevant to our times: from a social media lothario (“The WhatsApp Shakespeare”) to anxious self-loathing (“I Hate The Way I Look Today”). The retro jazz scatting in the latter might sound worlds away from the EDM beats of “Life Boat”, but the storytelling remains consistent throughout the record.

This Music May Contain Hope is about modern people, modern problems, and modern hope. Its lavish spectacle is well-earned by RAYE, a generational talent who strove for years to reach this point. She doesn’t just sell the message; she is the message.