Singers Corinne Bailey Rae and Ravyn Lenae joined Billboard‘s Delisa Shannon and Better Help’s Dr. Russell DuBois for the debut episode of Billboard‘s Like Minded series on Saturday afternoon (March 14) at the Billboard House @ SXSW.
Bailey Rae and Lenae discussed how they managed their mental health battles amid having success in different eras of music.
The British singer’s breakthrough came in the mid-2000s with “Like a Star,” which led to Bailey Rae’s self-titled debut in 2006, and she’s celebrating 20 years of the LP for the rest of 2026.
Bailey Rae’s life was turned upside down as she went from performing at bars to arenas around the globe and meeting some of her heroes like Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder, while Prince pulled up to one of her early U.S. shows.
“It seems dreamlike in some ways,” Bailey Rae said. “It was a huge time of transformation. Coming from being in a band, where everybody who you knew in the audience was the full extent of the people who got to connect with the music to having a record where it just flew across the world and I had no idea who was connecting with it.”
Lenae’s breakthrough was a decade in the making, as “Love Me Not” reached the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2025. However, what most people didn’t see behind closed doors was the Chicago native attempting to grapple with her success and yearning for more while dealing with loneliness and isolation.
“What you don’t expect is the loneliness of it,” Lenae admitted. “I remember being on tour and I remember crying one day in my hotel room and being confused about why I’m crying because everything’s going so well. I haven’t seen my family, I haven’t spent time doing normal things I love to do, and from this point on I know my schedule’s gonna be cram-packed.”
Lenae revealed that she had gone to therapy, but she’s strayed away from visits to her therapist in recent months, although she has plans to go back.
Bailey Rae echoed a lot of the same sentiments as Lenae and championed her honesty. “The idea your life is changing and it will never change back. I wish somebody said to me that all these things are for a season. They’ll be a season where you’re the hottest thing on the planet. But guess what? It won’t last forever.”
Bailey Rae also dealt with tragedy in the midst of her upswing, as her husband Jason Rae passed away from an accidental overdose in 2008. She used the metaphor of her career being like a surfer’s and how you don’t need to catch every wave, while there are going to be plenty of highs and lows.
Look for more Like Minded episodes in the coming months from Billboard.
