Raye Makes History With Her Song 'Genesis' On Capital Breakfast

7 June 2024, 08:58 | Updated: 7 June 2024, 09:20

Nearly 50 years after Capital became the first station to play Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody', we became the first station to play Raye's 7-minute track 'Genesis'.

On Friday 7th June, not only did Raye drop her new single 'Genesis' she sat down on Capital Breakfast with Jordan North, Chris Stark and Sian Welby for the first ever radio play through of the song.

While the confirmed Summertime Ball artist was on the show, listener Maisy in Rochdale text in saying, "Hello 2024 'Bohemian Rhapsody'", to which Sian said: "I mean, I'm gonna say it Raye, and I don't know the facts...

"For me this feels like a really cool experience as well because I don't know a female artist who's done something quite like this before."

Being the ever so modest artist that she is, Raye pushed back at the idea of being a once in a generation star, but Sian continued: "We've seen rappers do it, we've seen people like Stormzy do it - I just haven't, for me, I haven't seen someone in my generation do it."

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Jordan weighed in saying: "You said 'Bohemian Rhapsody' there, Capital was the first to play that as well."

The breakfast hosts remembered how when the Queen track first came out in the 80s no one would play it on-air due to it being 6 minutes long and at the time there was little faith in the song.

However, the late Capital Breakfast host Kenny Everett threw all caution to the wind and played the song, making history as the first radio presenter to play the now-iconic track.

"We've just had our own little 'Bohemian Rhapsody'," Jordan said, and Raye replied: "No, come on that's too big of a comparison!"

When explaining why the song is 7-minutes long, Raye said that when writing she thought "there's so much I wanna say", so it had to be that long.

She also explained how seven is a really important element of the song as the title 'Genesis' refers to the first book of the bible when the Lord made the world in 7 days.

Throughout the song Raye is praying and pleading, 'let there be light' just like God said in Genesis 1:3 and at one point, she sings: Genesis 1 verse 3 I’ll dry my eyes.

RAYE gets emotional talking about 7 minute epic 'Genesis', and gets interrupted by a trombone!

Talking about the meaning of the song and the political backdrop of it she quoted American singer-songwriter Nina Simone who once said, "it is an artists duty to reflect the times”.

She went on: "I think there's a lot of people out there dealing with stuff in the darkness and a lot of us going through stuff. And you know whether you're young or old, or whatever race you are - you know all of us are fighting or battling something.

"So, to be able to make a song in my way that expresses that and then to hear it played on, you know, mainstream, breakfast radio is mind blowing to me and also really special and something I don't take for granted."

We don't take it for granted either Raye. 49 years after Capital played the six-minute long 'Bohemian Rhapsody' for the first time we played the seven-minute long 'Genesis', truly a magical day in music history!

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