Raye Accepts the Triple Threat of the Year Award | Variety Hitmakers

Transcript

00:00I'm very grateful to be here. I've watched this event many times from Twitter, so it's really cool to be in the room.

00:07I'm nervous.

00:09Yeah, I'm nervous. Okay. I do want to say a couple of things though. I want to say, first of all,

00:15Miss Lana Del Rey is just sat in front of me, and I'm just trying to focus, and it's really hard to do that.

00:21And I didn't prepare a speech, but I just want to say it reminds me of a time

00:25where I was kind of a couple years into my career, and I was having a really

00:29tough time. The guy who had signed me to my label had left, and no one there

00:35cared or took me seriously. I had a really, like, a tough time.

00:37And I remember being told a story, and I don't know if any of this is factually accurate,

00:41but I was told a story that, you know, you were working hard for so many years as

00:47Lizzy, and

00:48no one kind of gave a shit, and no one was taking you seriously, and

00:53I feel like they told me you had to go to Germany to sign a record deal because no one would sign you in the

00:58UK or America. I don't know if that's a lie or not.

01:00But what I will say is hearing that, and the stories of all the incredible women who have fought and fought and fought just to be

01:08seen and heard, it gave me hope to just buckle down and keep going.

01:13I became an independent artist maybe, like, two or three years ago, and since then my life has changed,

01:19and I finally got to put out an album, and life has just been nuts. So I'm really grateful

01:24for the

01:26inspirational women in this room who have just set such a ridiculous example.

01:29And I also just want to say, because there's so many big fancy music execs in this room,

01:34I have been trying to bang this message home.

01:37And I know it's really annoying, and everyone's getting annoyed at me for banging on about it a lot,

01:41but songwriters are so important, and there's so much

01:44money to go around.

01:47I just had a proposal that what if we started to do royalty points, right?

01:52But it could be net, so it could be after the cost of music videos and stuff like that.

01:57So you're not making a loss, but it just means if songs do well, then writers get to do well, artists get to do well.

02:04Just one or two or three points, that would be great. So thank you so much Variety for this award.