A couple of days ago, I decided to mellow out during my shower to the sounds of Corinne Bailey Rae (shout-out to Bluetooth speakers!). I chose the acoustic version of her hit single, “Put Your Records On” (which I prefer to the studio version), and I couldn’t stop smiling. Rae and her soothing voice always have that effect.
I couldn’t have predicted that days later, I’d see her name trending. I went from fleeting panic (shout-out to Twitter for now adding a quick summary of what’s actually happening regarding the trending topic under the actual bolded topic name) to curiosity (did she announce a new project?) and clicked on her name. What I found was a mixture of annoyance and eventual pride at Twitter’s response to the annoyance of the day.
So, there’s this artist named Ritt Momney (born Jack Rutter) who recently hit the Hot 100 for his viral cover of “Put Your Records On” and ended up getting a whole-ass Billboard profile because of it. Like pretty much everyone else, I initially saw this dude’s name and thought Mitt Romney randomly did a cover of her song on TikTok. Hey, stranger things have happened in 2020.
Anyway, though the actual article did note that the song is a cover of Rae’s 2006 hit, the headline framing was pretty damn off-putting, “Ritt Momney Doesn’t Care If ‘Put Your Records On’ Is His Only Pop Hit.”
Yeah, it’s not his pop hit. Rae not only sung the song, but she wrote it, too (with John Beck and Steve Chrisanthou). It’s hers.
Thankfully, Twitter came through like Voltron to remind everyone that respect should be put on Rae’s name, damn it.
To Momney’s credit, he also believes Rae should get the primary props here.
“Songwriting will always be the main driving force behind how much anybody likes a song,” he told Billboard. “I think people give me way too much credit for doing cool production because it’s not the production that gets people dancing to it or makes people really like it. It’s the fact that it’s just a really good song.”
Momney also teased that he’s hoping to talk to Rae at some point.
“My manager is talking to Corinne Bailey Rae’s manager in some capacity,” he said. “I don’t want to get my hopes up too much, but I think that we might do an interview at some point. That would be awesome.”