Alexandra Kay‘s sophomore Second Wind album came out in October, but she is already working on her next set of tunes.
“I’m writing my third album now. I’ve already written a bunch of songs for it,” Kay reveals on XTU Philadelphia, adding that she is about to go on a writer’s retreat in Pensacola, Florida, with five songwriters to work on the project.
“We’re just going to write for a few days and hopefully finish the record and be able to come back with some more great songs,” she says.
A talented singer and songwriter, Kay also reveals her songwriting process.
“I’m a lyrics person first….I think that’s because I grew up not playing any instruments, and just grew up as a writer, just diary entries that turned to poems,” the Illinois native shares. “And then heard melodies and wrote that. And then, I learned how to play an instrument after that. I could just write it without anything.”
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Why Alexandra Kay Stays So Busy
Kay has already proven hersefl as a hard worker, which she now says is because she isn’t good at taking time off.
“I don’t love downtime,” Kay admits. “It makes me feel really antsy… I’m like a person who sits on the couch, gets halfway through a movie, and then I’m like, ‘I have work to do.'”
“I love being go, go, go all the time,” she adds. “Honestly, we’re on flights a lot. And so I take the times when we’re on flights to read a book, and that’s just kind of like my disconnect time.”
What Alexandra Kay Says About ‘Second Wind’
It was after Kay appeared on the Netflix show, Westside, a show that was supposed to change her career, but failed to deliver, when she began to start having success.
“I had just come back, and I wrote four songs I really loved,” Kay says on the Artist Friendly with Joel Madden podcast. “I was telling my mom on the phone, I said, ‘I just wrote these four songs, and I really like them, and I’m just going to put them out independently. And if this doesn’t work out, I’ll probably just see what else God has in store for me.
“I just don’t know that I can take another letdown, having just lost my second deal, and a show that was supposed to change my life that flopped,” she continues. “[I’m] broke, and I have nothing.’ And I [had] that guilt from going back to my hometown, after you had just moved to LA and did this whole Netflix thing. It just kind of felt like a failure.”
With nothing to lose, Kay released “I Kinda Don’t.” It’s the song that changed everything for her.
“That was my first viral song, my first to go straight to the top of the iTunes charts,” Kay recalls. “And then the second song did the exact same thing. And then before I knew it, all the labels were in my inbox, and I haven’t slowed down since. I tell this story on stage every night, because that’s what I think about when I think about Second Wind. It was all the times that I thought I was done, that the fans were like, ‘You are not even close to being done.’ And they were my second wind. So that’s why I named the record Second Wind.”
Kay has plenty of tour dates on the calendar in 2026, including shows in Australia and New Zealand with Old Dominion in March.
Photo Credit: CMA