Songfacts®:

• In this peaceful song, Corinne Bailey Rae casts worry aside because life is better spent with your hair down, listening to records. "That came from me putting on my dad's records," she told People. "I remember listening to this Stevie Wonder song, and I had on big chunky heels dancing in my loft bedroom. My neighbor came knocking."
  
  She wrote the song with John Beck (Tasmin Archer's "Sleeping Satellite") and Steve Chrisanthou.
• The opening line, "Three little birds sat on my window, and they tell me I don't need to worry," is a reference to Bob Marley & The Wailers' 1980 classic "Three Little Birds," the one where Marley tells us:
  
  Don't worry about a thing
  'Cause every little thing gonna be alright
• "Put Your Records On" was Bailey Rae's breakthrough hit, released on her self-titled debut album in 2006 when she was 26. She recalled to Billboard magazine: "It was a shock to me. I thought it was going to be much more of an underground record because it was underproduced. I wasn't expecting that reaction at all."
• Don't you let those other boys fool you
  Gotta love that Afro hairdo
  
  The lyric is a message to Bailey-Rae's younger self to embrace her natural hair. When she was a teenager, the trend was for straight tresses and the singer feared being out of step if she didn't follow the fashion.
  "There was this idea that if you had curly hair, you were making this big statement," Bailey Rae explained to Red magazine. "But if you have curly, afro, textured hair, that's just how it is naturally. You're not trying to make yourself bigger, this is just the room you take up."
• A cover by Salt Lake City-based singer Ritt Momney entered the singles charts worldwide in the fall of 2020. It peaked at #30 in the US and #25 in the UK.
  
  Ritt Momney was a Salt Lake City-based garage band, taking their name from a tongue-in-cheek spoonerism on Utah politician Mitt Romney. The other members left, leaving Jack Rutter to keep the moniker for his solo project.
  
  Feeling depressed after the coronavirus pandemic started shutting everything down, Rutter wanted something uplifting and recalled his mom playing "Put Your Records On" in the car when he was a child. So he recorded a cover in the basement of his parents' home. Rutter explained to NME: "If someone asked 'what's the most positive and helpful song you could think of right now?' I felt it would always be that song. It reminds me of the simpler time of riding in your mum's car and going to soccer practice or whatever. It's definitely always stuck with me."
• Girl, put your records on, tell me your favorite song
  You go ahead, let your hair down
  
  Corinne Bailey Rae noted to Genius that when she was a child, her favorite song was Mariah Carey's "Vision Of Love." She added:
  
  "I found that as a young person, music was a really amazing way to find confidence and to find self-expression. You could always find that song that's like, 'That's just me. That person knows exactly how I feel.' Certain pop songs. I feel like I just put on music and feel like invincible and super confident and bold and let the music sort of carry you. To me, that's what my favorite song is doing. It would turn me from being someone that was shy or self conscious or uncomfortable into a feeling really sort of bold and confident while that song is on, you kind of live in the song."
• Following the song's success, several major musical icons contacted Bailey Rae directly. Prince came to one of her shows, and Stevie Wonder called her personally; artists she described to Kelly Clarkson as being "from my record collection."
• Inspired by a desire to share the importance of music with her two daughters, Bailey Rae wrote a children's book also titled Put Your Records On, which she published in 2025. The book follows a girl named Bea who discovers her great aunt Portia's record collection and learns there's a song for every feeling. It ties directly into the song's themes of self-discovery and emotional connection to music.
• Corinne Bailey Rae is from the UK, where "Put Your Records On" was a big hit, climbing to #2 in February 2006. In America it took the scenic route, gradually earning airplay and spreading through word-of-mouth (and the internet) to peak at #64 that October. It's one of those songs that everyone knows but didn't chart very high because the discovery was so spread out. Her next American single was "Like A Star," which reached #56 in March 2007.
  
  Bailey Rae didn't put out her second album until 2010, waylaid by the death of her husband from an accidental overdose in 2008. She kept a light touring and recording schedule in ensuing years and remarried in 2013 to a musician named Steve Brown.