To Her (And Most Women’s) Detriment, RAYE Goes Especially Retro on “Where Is My Husband!”

After the success of her debut album, My 21st Century Blues, in 2023, the music industry was pretty much immediately itching to see what RAYE would do next. And what she’s decided to do with her sophomore album, evidently, is take the Amy Winehouse approach to things (even more than before, and maybe even more than Lola Young on I’m Only F**king Myself). Except, in contrast to Winehouse, the sound she’s wielding for her fusion of doo-wop and Motown influences, doesn’t exactly contain “modern” lyrics in the way that Winehouse’s did (e.g., “Don’t make no difference if I end up alone/I’d rather have myself and smoke my home-grown/Oh, it’s got me addicted/Does more than any dick did”).

Instead, as though to reflect back the state of the world and its reversion to a time when a woman’s primary goal in life was to get married, RAYE makes the central focus of the song all about her desperate search for a man who will marry her (begging the question of whether or not she might as well name this album My 20th Century Blues). So it is that she delves right into the “despairing” chorus, “Baby, where the hell is my husband?/What is takin’ him so long to find me?/Oh, baby, where the hell is my lover?/Getting down with another?/Tell him if you see him, baby, if you see him, tell him/He should holler.” Those of a more literal-minded nature might, of course, take RAYE’s question to mean she’s wondering where her actual, “already-in-existence” husband is, as though she already has one and wants to know his physical, in real time location. This further compounded by RAYE singing another verse that literal-minded listeners would infer to mean her “actual” husband is cheating on her when she says, “I only fear he taking time with other women that ain’t me/While I’ve been reviewin’ applications/Wait till I get my hands on him, I’ma tell him off too.”

But, of course, anyone with even half a brain can comprehend that RAYE is essentially saying what Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) already did in the season three episode of Sex and the City, “Where There’s Smoke…” Her frustration expressed while hungover and irritable, Charlotte demands of her friends, “I’ve been dating since I was fifteen. I’m exhausted. Where is he?” It’s Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) who then incredulously clarifies, “Who, the white knight?” Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) quickly adds, “That only happens in fairy tales.” Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) then chimes in, “Charlotte, honey, did you ever think that maybe we’re the white knights, and we’re the ones that have to save ourselves?” Charlotte immediately writes such a “novel” thought off as “depressing.” As RAYE probably would based on the lyrical content of “Where Is My Husband!” Content that mirrors the retro visuals of the video, directed by brothers Will Reid and Ed Reid a.k.a. The Reids.

With the help of these two brothers, RAYE takes the retro concept to the full visual extreme, starting with the fact that the video is introduced with a Looney Tunes-esque set of circles in black and white featuring the text (with each phrase stacked atop the next), “RAYE Presents Where Is My Husband The Sound is Retro-Pop.” Obviously, it’s not just the sound that’s retro though. It’s the entire belief system that would have a woman of the present singing, “…how long he kept me waitin’, anticipatin’/Prayin’ to the Lord to givе him to my lovin’ arms/And despite my frustrations/And he must need mе/Completely/How my heart yearns for him/Is he far away?/Is he okay?/This man is testin’ me/Uh huh, uh huh, uh/Help me, help me, help me, Lord/I need you to tell me/Baby/Where the hell is my husband?”

After the title card sets the tone for the “throwback” feel, the black and white color palette continues as RAYE finds herself in the middle of a hallway in an apartment building looking quite confused about where the fuck she is (almost like David [Tobey Maguire] and Jennifer [Reese Witherspoon] after entering Pleasantville in the movie of the same name). In the distance, however, she clocks the silhouette of a man who seems to be getting ever farther and farther away from her. Especially the more that she chases him. This, of course, serving as a metaphor for how, the more you try to find/get something (or someone) you’re after, the more likely it (or, in this case, he) is to slip through your fingers as a result of “forcing it.” This is the running (pun intended) motif throughout the video, which then alternates between rich “Technicolor” (thereby fully showcasing the vibrancy of RAYE’s red sequined dress) and B&W—almost like an unwitting way to accent how schizophrenic a song like this feels in the present era. Or so-called present era.

The time we’re supposed to be in is further called into question when two of RAYE’s backup singers appear on the proverbial sidelines waving signs to “cheer her on” in her thus far abyssal “love search.” These signs assuring, “Love Will Find You” and “Your Husband Is Coming!” (which, frankly, comes across as really fuckin’ ominous). In a scene soon after, RAYE keeps running around in her black and white version of the world (you know, like a 1950s version of it) frantically looking for a man who isn’t really there. Finding herself in a random room, she encounters a bridal-outfitted mannequin placed next to a groom.

After approaching it, she pulls the veil off the mannequin’s head before turning to see the live (read: non-mannequin) priest holding up not a bible (as it might appear), but some kind of legal history book that, for whatever reason, has a chapter on the Forestry Act of 1945 (perhaps an unintentional allegory intended by the marriage between government and increased control over the management of land [read: forestry]). Written over that text is RAYE’s attempt at making this entire song feel slightly more modern: “Find yourself & love will find you!!” In other words, don’t try to be someone you’re not in a fruitless bid to attract the “perfect person.” Because, of course, somewhere down the line, revealing the “real” you to the one you “lassoed” under false pretenses will only lead to pain on both sides.

And yet, what leads to pain primarily for the listener who can’t stomach such a gender-conventional/supporting-of-gender-conventions song is how much this “little ditty,” as “sweet” as it’s intended to be, even undoes something as “progressive” as Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” which is equally as “where is my husband”-centric. Not to mention as reinforcing of how materialistic women make themselves out to be when it comes to weddings and the trappings thereof. Hence, Bey’s taunt, “If you like it, then you should’ve put a ring on it.” Her desire for this material symbol of love being something she tries to backpedal on later in the song when she adds, “Don’t treat me to these things of the world/I’m not that kind of girl/Your love is what I prefer, what I deserve.”

RAYE claims the same, yet also reverts to babbling on rather passionately about a wedding ring, singing in an ultra-fast manner, “I would like a ring, I would like a ring/I would like a diamond ring on my wedding finger/I would like a big and shiny diamond that I can wave around/And talk, and talk about it.” So it is that RAYE, “catchy tune” or not (courtesy of co-production from Sabath, who also, along with RAYE, greatly contributed to JADE’s recent debut, That’s Showbiz Baby) only ends up reiterating a tired message about women and their “desires” (/main goals in life) at a moment in history when it’s extremely perilous to do so.