Sitting on a sofa her Midtown Nashville condo, Alexandra Kay makes a daring prediction: She’s going to achieve No. 1 on the Nation Airplay chart.
“I actually imagine my tune ‘Straight for the Coronary heart’ will probably be my first No. 1 at nation radio,” she tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast. “And I’ve no drawback saying that, and I say it on stage on a regular basis.”
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Lengthy earlier than she was named to Pandora’s 2025 Artist to Watch: Nation and CMT’s 2025 Subsequent Ladies of Nation lists, Kay constructed a profession as an impartial artist. After getting dropped by a label in 2019, she poured herself into social media and amassed 8.5 million social media followers with the assistance of her “espresso covers” movies during which she sings a canopy of a well-known nation tune — “Everyone loves ‘90s nation,” she notes — whereas getting ready a espresso drink.
She boosted her unique music by leveraging the recognition of her espresso movies. After a canopy tune gave her “a carry within the algorithm,” Kay would instantly submit an unique tune. “That’s how I ended up getting hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of streams of my unique music,” she explains.
Regardless that she constructed an internet following and toured as an impartial artist, Kay wanted assist hurdling the subsequent impediment: nation radio. BMG’s BBR Music Group/Wheelhouse Data will launch her second album, Second Wind, on Oct. 24, and he or she’s betting the label group, house to Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson, can take her profession to the subsequent stage. BMG, she says, has “among the finest nation radio groups within the sport proper now.”
Nation radio, although, is dominated by males. Ladies account for simply seven of the 60 songs on the present Billboard Country Airplay chart (eight should you embrace Tate McRae, a visitor on Morgan Wallen’s “What I Need”). The highest feminine observe on the chart, Wilson’s “Someplace Over Laredo,” is No. 17.
Kay is undeterred. “I actually don’t let that trouble me in any respect, and I don’t let it sluggish me down,” she says. “As a result of my expertise goes to be what God intends for me, and I do know for certain that I’m not going to have my foot off the gasoline.”
Hearken to the whole interview with Alexandra Kay, which covers the opening of her espresso retailer in her hometown, her continuous social media prowess, her relationship along with her followers and the trick to writing a tune everyone can relate to. Use the embedded Spotify participant under, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, Podbean or Everand.