Corinne Bailey Rae floats freely with "The Sea"

Grammy nominated singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae has spent much of the past year fielding queries about grief and loss. Media outlets worldwide wanted to talk about the death of her husband Jason Rae from a drug overdose in 2008. She acquiesced. More than once – granting interviews to several of publications and speaking openly about the experience.

Now, with the release of her latest album, "The Sea," it is time to let the music speak. Rae, who resides in Leeds, England, recently launched her U.S. tour which arrives in Atlanta for a sold-out show on Tuesday. She says she hasn't read reviews, but has gotten a sense that reaction to the album is positive. “I feel really good about it," Rae said. "I think people recognize it is a development from my first album."

"The Sea," she said, complements her self-titled debut album that yielded the hit "Put Your Records On," a song that was nominated for two Grammy awards in 2007. Bailey was also up for best new artist that same year.

After some time spent out of the spotlight, Rae said she is ready to embrace the touring experience. “The main thing [I enjoy] is the gigs, being in the venue, waiting for it to fill up and wondering what the people are going to be like. I really enjoy playing a gig where I feel like people know the songs," she said.

Surely, fans will be singing along to everything from the rock infused tune with Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson of the Roots, "The Blackest Lily," as well as the slower, smoother, "Closer," an R&B radio hit that helped propel the album to a peak position of  No. 2 on the Billboard R&B/Hip Hop Chart.

After reading so much about Rae's private life over the past two years, here are a few things you may not know about the reflective singer.

First performance: "The first song I sang in front of an audience was at school for Christmas. A song about the baby Jesus probably. I remember auditioning for it."

Alternate career goals: "I used to do ballet. When I was really young I wanted to be a ballerina, and I probably wanted to be a writer after that. I used to like to write in the style of any author I was reading at the time."

Hobbies: "I really like gardening. I like the fact that you can make it look pretty different in just a day. I've been chopping a lot of things down in my garden that are overgrown. Tuberose are my favorite flowers. I like the scent of those. They are really amazing and heady and intoxicating, and after that regular roses."

Favorite vacation spot: "I really like Barcelona. I've been there three or four times. I love the Gaudi [architecture].  It looks a lot like it is homemade...and childlike on a really big scale."

Nickname: "I just have that type of name that no one ever seems to elaborate on."

Favorite quote: "In Patti Smith's book 'Just Kids,' she said something about art and how art belongs to God and can't be judged by any person. She had a relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe and she talks about holding the hand of God and painting. It is a really great quote...I'm going to have to write that out."