Corinne Bailey Rae feared she 'wouldn't survive' her late husband's death from an overdose aged 31 and never expected to get married again or have children

Corinne Bailey Rae has said she didn't think she would 'survive' her first husband Jason's death when he was just 31-years-old.

The Put Your Records On singer was just 29 when her husband of seven years died of an accidental drug overdose in 2008.

The couple had been together for nine years after Corinne, 47, met the saxophonist at the club she worked at whilst studying English at Leeds University. 

The couple travelled the world together as her music career took off and her husband joined her band.

But their life together came to a heartbreaking end when Jason, who Corinne has described as 'very cautious' and unwilling to even take a paracetemol when he wasn't drunk, tried methadone after a night out drinking with a friend. 

His death was attributed to him being a 'naive user' of the heroin substitute medication. 

'The initial feeling was shock and disbelief, and then just feeling like that's the end of my life,' Corinne has recalled in a new interview. 'I was only 29, but I felt, well I've had a good run and I've had all these great things happen.'

'It just felt like this was the end of everything. I was so incapacitated. I didn't do anything. I didn't really leave the house. I didn't work,' she told the Guardian. 

'It was incredibly painful. There was nothing else. I was just thinking how will I survive the rest of my life, because I was in such a massive amount of pain.'

At the time of Jason's death Corinne was close to finishing recording her second album The Sea, but it took her another two years to release the record. 

It was during this time that her friendship with the album's producer Steve Brown, a musician who had played with Jason, gradually started to develop into a relationship.

The two married in 2013 and now share two daughters aged eight and six. 

Corinne has called her second marriage and her family 'a real bonus,' explaining: 'I didn't expect to get married again or have children.'

Corinne burst on to the music scene with Put Your Records On in 2006, followed by her self-titled album which was greeted with rip-roaring success, having debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and has been certified triple platinum.

Speaking about the divide between her 2006 debut and her 2010 second album Corrine noted how her life was split by the tragedy, saying of Jason's death: 

'As well as changing my life, it also changed my career in a really big way'.

She is now celebrating the 20th anniversary of Put Your Records on with an illustrated children's book of the same name.