B ella Kay is heading into a white-hot year. We’re seated in the back of Silence Please, a niche listening room-turned-café in lower Manhattan, just a few days after her 20th birthday. “I’ll never be on fire like I was when I was 19,” she jokes, quoting Lorde’s “Perfect Places.”
Nineteen is a sacred age in pop. There’s something about it that rages and burns, especially among young women who process their emotions through melody and melodrama. When Olivia Rodrigo sang about 19 on “Teenage Dream,” she asked, “When am I gonna stop being wise beyond my years and just start being wise?” Billie Eilish searched for the same answer at the same age on Happier Than Ever. But as Kay heads into this new decade, she’s pouring gasoline on the fire.
“If I have a choice between a good decision and a bad decision, but the bad decision is fun, I’m probably gonna choose the bad decision,” the singer-songwriter says. “But it’s not like I’m choosing these terrible, terrible things for myself. In my own personal life, I think it’s more reserved. Like, I’m not in danger. I don’t know, I like to be a little reckless.” She would always rather take the risk and know than spend her life wondering what could have been. So far, it’s been paying off.
In January, she released “iloveitiloveitiloveit,” which is currently sitting comfortably in the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. The brazen record is full of declarations that require a double-take, including the very first lyric: “I like being used, it means I have a purpose.” The three-minutes that follow her blunt confession leave an undeniable first impression. Kay isn’t some kind of unhinged chaos agent or emotional thrill-seeker (well, maybe just a little), but rather an adventurous artist eager to dig deep beneath the surface.
Last summer, Kay signed a contract with Atlantic Records and released her debut single “The Sick,” a harrowing song about hard truths and lost causes. It opens with the cutting line: “I hope your daddy’s done hatin’ you.” Kay delivers the gut-punch in the southern drawl she picked up between Houston and Orlando, adding a sweet edge to her razor-sharp songwriting. But her latest single, “Promise,” is a soft, sensitive, and all-consuming record about taking a risk that could potentially ruin a friendship. “I want you but I’ll never tell you/’Cause if I tell you, you could say I’m not the one you want,” she sings. “And I couldn’t handle that/So if I tell you, then promise me I can take it back.”
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Kay seems to be more of a relentless romantic than a hopeless one. “When it comes to relationships, I will wear it out until it’s done,” she says. “I’ll call them until they don’t pick up anymore.” There’s one particular connection that occupies her mind across her upcoming debut album. “In the vein of relationship things, it also explores so many thought processes of this thing that’s happening,” she adds. “It’s a ‘will they, won’t they’ type of vibe, which I think is exciting.” She’s leaning more towards will they, but teases, “We’ll see when you listen to the album.”
The record is nearing completion with about a dozen tracks already slated. There’s one final track Kay has been searching for to close the album. She knows there’s something left to say, but she hasn’t decided on a sound yet. The preview tracks she shares with me aren’t finalized, but the lack of polish isn’t obvious. There’s an element of grit that evokes the raw emotion in her performances. Kay wraps her voice around propulsive rock arrangements on one, while another leans into flamenco pop. A third is a grievous ballad with swelling violins laid over a restless piano melody.
They each introduce more complicated dimensions of Kay, a young artist who is still making sense of where she’s been and where she’s going. “It’s talking a little bit about my past, what it was like growing up, and talking a little bit about struggling with mental health and struggling with body issues,” Kay says. Her intuition as an artist is the strongest it’s ever been — especially considering she only started properly writing songs about five years ago, when Olivia Rodrigo overhauled pop with “Driver’s License.”
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“I thought she was the coolest, especially from a songwriting perspective,” Kay says. “I didn’t know that songwriting could be such an impactful thing. I grew up with a lot of pop music where the lyrics aren’t the heaviest part of the song, so it was really cool to see someone take pop and have songwriting be so heavily the main drive of the song. I basically learned what songwriting was from her.”
At the time, Kay was still in high school and uncertain about what to do next. She figured she’d go study law. “I didn’t know how to make music, like how to start,” Kay says. “At that point in time, [I thought], TikTok is not working, so I gotta go to school.” After a year, that wasn’t working either. She missed music and thought, “I’m betraying myself by not doing that.” She didn’t come from a particularly musical family, in practice, though she learned later that her grandmother nearly pursued a career in music, too. “She almost did that instead of nursing,” Kay says. What stopped her? “Probably the same thing that I experienced at the time. [Thinking], ‘It’s time to grow up.’”
The upcoming album feels like a true capsule of her coming-of-age experience. Kay describes the aesthetic of the record in bursts. It’s soft-grunge, blues and reds, and “very dirty city,” like London or New York — essentially the polar opposite of Los Angeles, where she experienced her first studio sessions last year. She worked with different songwriter and producer pairings that were arranged for her there, but those songs will remain a mystery.
“None of them are coming out,” Kay says. “It was very clear that I was becoming changed by other people in the room.” As the rookie in the studio, Kay wasn’t completely comfortable shooting down ideas, yet. “I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I don’t like that,’ even if that was the case,” she says. “I think at first I didn’t realize they’re my songs and it’s about me. It was like, ‘Do you want it that way? Of course, it’s obviously not my song. Let’s do it your way.’” Since then, she’s developed a fresh layer of tough skin. Kay doesn’t expect everyone to immediately understand her, but she also has no interest in over-explaining herself.
After some particularly rough and unproductive sessions, Kay found herself texting Alexis Kesselman, better known as Idarose, the producer she partnered with for “iloveitiloveitiloveit.” “I was like, ‘This is so much worse. The song is not as good. They don’t get my vibe,’” she says. “‘Nobody’s you.’” She hasn’t shut out other creative partners while making her album, but it’s just easy with Kesselman. “She gets the thing about me that I think people find fresh, which is my [attitude of], ‘Eh, it’s bad for me. I don’t care,’” Kay says. “I’ll say this crazy thing and she’s like, ‘Duh.’ Other people would be like, ‘Huh? What do you mean by that?’”
Kesselman is also upfront about when something isn’t working in the studio. “I love people who give me shit,” Kay says. “When everyone is around going, “You did it! Everything you do is perfect!” I’m like, that’s not true. My favorite people are the people that are like, ‘Yeah, that was ass.’” For as much as her life has changed in the past year, her inner-circle has remained the same, for the most part. Her friend group is still a sounding board for her questionable ideas that often lead to great songs — and they’re down for the ride.
A few months ago, while driving around with her best friend, Kay got a new follower notification on Instagram. “You won’t believe who just followed me,’” she told her. It was SZA. “I’ve loved her, always, and I love SOS so much,” Kay says. “CTRL is everything.” It was among the records her dad would play while driving her to school. “Now, as I’m older, I come back to that album and every time there’s a new song where I’m like, ‘This is amazing.’”
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They share the same sense of adventure when it comes to seeing what might be on the other side of an emotional minefield. Think “F2F,” where SZA sings, “Knowin’ you gon’ block me tomorrow, can you still come and get me?” What’s the harm in asking, or playing up the theatrics? “Everything in songs is dramatized to the max,” Kay says. “Especially with the line, ‘I love when we fight and I like it when you’re mean,’ [in “iloveitiloveitiloveit”]. People thought I meant we’re screaming at each other. No, no. I meant, like, some banter. Obviously it’s toxic, but it’s not so toxic that it’s like, ‘Girl, get out of there.’”
There’s often a tendency to label young artists with sharp perspectives as being wise beyond their years, or somehow separate from their generation. With Kay, it’s obvious her wisdom stems from being present and curious — not like she’s been here before, but like she’s taking in every new feeling and experience without fear. Still, she undercuts it with some more bad ideas. “I love to text or call someone I should not text or call,” she says. “The worst thing that happens is they don’t respond — and they always respond.”
