Corinne Bailey Rae only seemed least likely to be involved in a scandalous, tragic, drug-related death

  

Looking back, it seems easy enough to figure which of the UK song girls who became big Starbucks stars in the past two years would not wind up with a drug-related death on her biography, let alone in her marriage. From cutting marks to flesh-eating bacteria, scrawny Amy Winehouse has been up front with trouble in the tabloids; chubby party girl Lily Allen has run second with miscarriages and other clubbing-related casualties; while funnyface Corinne Bailey Rae seemed the most settled of the bunch, what with her appearances with John Mayer and on Studio 60 and all. But she's really always been the only one of the group with a true hint of mystery; it’s been said from the start that there was a much darker, deeper triphop core to her sunshiney music; and now she’s the one who winds up with a husband dead from a drug overdose.

It's sort of the like Heath Ledger turning up dead while everyone was watching Lindsay Lohan.

Corinne Bailey, by the way, was the only one of the women who did not record with producer Mark Ronson. Her dead husband, though, did, and he gives some Vanity Fair writer a good hook thirty five years from now when the Brit singers get the same treatment the magazine gave Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell and Carole King this month.