Kita Alexander is young, in love & ready for a new chapter
Kita Alexander is young, in love & ready for a new chapter
Kita Alexander is young, in love & ready for a new chapter
The Byron-based musician on her debut album and putting family first.
By Ella Sangster
WHEN KITA ALEXANDER sits down next to me in a Byron Bay hotel room, it's hard to believe she's only just returned from a whirlwind two-week trip in Los Angeles. If she's jet-lagged, she disguises it well. Impeccably dressed and disarmingly present, she sips on a mug of hot raw cacao ("think of the richest hot chocolate and then times it by one hundred," she describes) while she speaks-which she does with both consideration and candour.
Despite relishing the slow-paced, free-spirited beach life, Alexander's career is moving quicker than ever in 2024. When we meet, she's mere hours away from hosting an intimate launch party for her upcoming debut album, and a few weeks from the first show of her Australian tour, which'll include a stop at Australia's biggest music festival Splendour in the Grass. Putting the show together is still "on my to-do list," she admits casually. While it'd be only natural for an artist, who went certified 2x Platinum, by the ARIAs in 2020 to feel the pressure, if not buzzy anticipation, of embarking on her biggest local tour yet Alexander is surprisingly calm about the impending arrival of two back-to-back career milestones.
"I'm just excited," she says. "I've never pushed myself this hard in my workspace. I'm excited to see what I can achieve [when I'm] actually putting my all into it, instead of focusing on everybody else in my life."
Given she's been in the industry for almost 10 years Alexander first made acclaim when Triple J picked up her debut single "My Own Way" in August 2015-it's hard to believe this is Alexander's debut album. In the past decade, she's released four EPs, garnered three ARIA Gold and, yes, two ARIA Platinum Awards, and recently enjoyed a top 20 placement on Triple J's annual Hottest 100 with her feature on FISHER's "Atmosphere". Not to mention, she got married to professional surfer, Olympian and author Owen Wright in 2021-all the while raising their two young children, Vali, 7 and Rumi, 3.
Family is a huge inspiration of Alexander's, with Wright serving as the muse for her new record, Young In Love. The pair met almost a decade ago when Alexander was 19, and across 10 songs on the album, she charts the evolution of their love story. From songs like "7 Minutes In Heaven," which captures the thrill of a youthful, throw-caution-to-the-wind kind of romance, to sweet ballads like her collaboration with Morgan Evans, "Date Night" and hope-filled bops such as "All Night," Alexander captures the whirlwind ups and downs of a long-term relationship.
We kind of GREW UP TOGETHER. And we GREW UP IN LOVE
Young In Love in its entirety was written just over a year ago, but its emotional undercurrent is one that, as the name suggests, runs thick with the complex emotions of being young, wide-eyed and falling deeply in love. During the writing process, Alexander traced the course of their relationship, at times applying the lens of hindsight and at others, allowing the raw emotion of memory to flow freely.
"I was with my husband since I was 19 and we say all the time, we kind of grew up together. And we grew up in love," she says. "I look at my stepmom and my dad and I say, 'wow, you guys just don't seem to really have any bumps or hurdles'. And they're like, 'Kita, we made our mistakes in our first marriages, you know-we found ourselves later in life'. So for Owen and I, we've made these mistakes together and stuck it out. And it hasn't been easy along the way … but that's the idea of being young and in love, and riding it out together."
Naturally, this included dipping into memories and tapping into emotions that might not fit into a traditional fairytale narrative. Drawing on more uncertain or turbulent moments as much as she does during the times of bliss, Alexander paints a refreshingly honest portrait of a young relationship across the record.
Of putting those thoughts and reflections to paper, she adds, I'm not judging myself. I'm not critiquing myself. It's just out. That kind of youthful, frank honesty-and her radical acceptance of all the admissions it evoked-was an approach she cultivated during writing sessions for her next bodies of work in LA earlier this year. While overseas, she found herself considering how she might evolve as a songwriter for future projects, pondering more existential questions: What do I want to say? How do I want to say it? Who do I want to be in my songs?
Accordingly, Young In Love feels like I'm closing the door on a chapter, that crazy time of being young and in love. I feel like I'm growing up now and that album has encapsulated all those crazy feelings and that rollercoaster of emotions and all the journaling and all the confusion and self-doubt and growth.
As Alexander grows, so too has her outlook on the record's titular subject matter. "My perspective of love is ever-evolving," she says. "I think I won't ever be like, 'Yep, I've made up my mind about how love should be or how I should perceive it.' It's going to grow. It's going to change every step of the way. And I hope it does, because it means I'll continue growing."
As well as being her creative influence, Wright is also Alexander's number-one supporter-or perhaps her second or third, eclipsed by her son, Vali or daughter, Rumi.
"My son asked me to play my new music for him all the way to school this morning," Alexander smiles. "And I had to stop it to do some vocal warm-ups and he's like, 'Mum, I was listening, put it back on.'"
While music remains a key pillar in Alexander's life, her family is quite obviously her number-one priority. She reflects on their role in the creation of Young In Love, noting that she gave herself exactly four weeks to write it. While some artists have capacity to hang around in recording studios or spend weeks hunkered down in a remote location to source inspiration, Alexander has two young children to get home to. Mum time is as important to her as music time.
"It's pretty business for me," she says of songwriting. "I'm just like get in, get it done, I want to go home to my kids."
If one thing's clear though, it's that Alexander has forged a career on her own terms. But her greatest learning from the action-packed decade that has been?
"Stay true to who you are in the real world," she advises. "Staying true to what you want in your life-not your work life, just your life."
Listen to Young In Love below.
Related: In her new EP, Kita Alexander juxtaposes trauma with a beat that makes it impossible not to listen
The post Kita Alexander is young, in love & ready for a new chapter appeared first on Harper's Bazaar Australia.
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