RAYE Blasts ‘Nasty’ Amy Winehouse Defenders: “It’s the Same Evil,” She Says

It’s the same evil, RAYE told Billboard in her May cover story — a blunt, almost weary summation of how online fans who claim to defend Amy Winehouse end up doing the same damage to her that they insist they’re opposing.

The exchange comes in the context of RAYE explaining why she opens her March album This Music May Contain Hope with the song “I Will Overcome,” a track that foregrounds the strange irony of being attacked in Amy’s name. On the record’s first cut she sings:

“Some people say I remind them of Amy/ Some spit through their keyboards, I’ll never amount/ And the evil in insults, the arrows from your tongue/ [Are] the same devils you tortured her with.”

“It just strikes me as so funny, darkly funny, that someone can rip into me in the most evil, horrible way, ‘defending’ Amy,” RAYE tells Billboard’s Hannah Dailey in the piece published Thursday, May 7. “What you’re saying to me is a microcosm of what Amy went through. Amy went through being berated and annihilated through words — by the press, by the public, by everyone.”

She didn’t mince words about the tone of those attacks. “It’s one thing to not like me, that’s fine,” she said. “It’s just the irony of someone being so horrible, so dark, so nasty. It’s the same evil. I just wanted to say that, because … I get a lot of beautiful, lovely, kind things. Unfortunately, the negative things are just louder.”

The comments land against a high point in RAYE’s career: This Music May Contain Hope debuted at No. 11 on the Billboard 200 after its March arrival and became her first LP to reach No. 1 in the U.K. The success follows a difficult period after her split from Polydor Records in 2021, when she began to rebuild on independent footing.

Beyond the Amy comparison, the Billboard cover story finds RAYE reflective about heavier personal subjects. She discusses struggles with mental health, the trauma of sexual assault, and how she’s found ways to let light back into her life. Dating, she admits, is back on the table — a theme she leaned into on the single “Where Is My Husband!”, which has climbed to No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100.

About wanting love she says, “It’s been genuinely so many years that it feels alien to me. Sometimes I’m very assured and confident and happy with my life, and then some days I’m watching a rom-com, and I’m like, ‘Where? Where?’ But it’s not serious. I’m not crying myself to sleep every night — just some nights.”

RAYE photographed on April 10, 2026 at The Auditorium in Chicago. Gucci faux fur coat, earrings and heels.
Jingyu Lin