Alex Ray Is Done Hiding: The Nashville Artist Gets Candid About Love, Vulnerability, and Her Upcoming EP

“We are living in an environment that is completely dehumanizing LGBTQ people. As a bisexual woman who grew up in a very conservative place… I would want to somehow get across to people who don’t accept us that we are real people just trying to live our lives. On the other side of that, mental health is super important to me… Through my community, I’d like to instill some empathy with really kind conversations about how we can actually help people who are going through this and create a place of safety where they can work on it.”

I had the pleasure of talking with Alex Ray. Alex an emerging figure in alternative pop, is part of a growing movement of genre-fluid artists who are reshaping the sound of mainstream music from the margins. Based in Nashville but often working between Tennessee and Los Angeles, Ray has carved out a distinctive creative identity built around lyrical vulnerability, sonic experimentation, and an unfiltered perspective on mental health, queerness, and the contradictions of public and private life in the digital age.

Ray’s musical foundation was laid early, growing up in the small, rural town of Manchester, Kentucky. Her upbringing was deeply shaped by religion — her father served as both a pastor and an attorney, while her mother was a teacher — and her earliest performances took place in church. Writing songs began as a form of emotional release, a way to process experiences that didn’t fit easily within the confines of the world around her. As a bisexual woman raised in a conservative Christian household, Ray used songwriting to explore the often conflicting parts of her identity.

Despite an early love for music, Ray initially took a more conventional path. She attended a Christian college in Kentucky, where a study-abroad program to Nashville — a city that would later become her base — served as her introduction to the professional side of the music industry. The experience provided a crash course in songwriting, touring, and stagecraft. After college, she pivoted again, entering law school, graduating as valedictorian, and practicing commercial litigation at a major firm.

Ray describes this chapter of her life as both intense and formative. Her legal work ranged from high-stakes corporate disputes to pro bono efforts on behalf of abuse survivors and wrongfully convicted individuals. In the courtroom, she encountered everything from billion-dollar disagreements to lawsuits brought by clients who believed COVID vaccines had implanted chips in their bodies. Despite the intellectual rigor and occasional drama of her legal career, music remained a gravitational force.

In 2023, Ray reached out to her future manager with a simple message: she was ready to make music again. That outreach marked the beginning of her reentry into the industry, and she soon began work on what would become her debut EP, slated for release in fall 2025. The project includes her upcoming single “UR KINDA LUV,” a collaboration with producer SAYWHEN. Due for release on May 9, 2025, the track blends dreamlike synth textures with an intense breakdown — what Ray describes as “absolutely disgusting” — and marks a sonic and emotional bridge between her earlier work and the material on the new EP.

“UR KINDA LUV” emerged from a moment of emotional clarity. Originally intended as a recording session for a more aggressive breakup song, Ray arrived too in love to inhabit the mood of that track. Instead, she and SAYWHEN shifted directions, capturing the early stages of a relationship that felt like a turning point. The result is a song that balances emotional openness with musical ferocity, a contrast that has become central to Ray’s style.

Ray’s music does not shy away from mental health topics, a decision that is both personal and political. She has spoken candidly about her experiences with bipolar disorder, describing herself as a rapid cycler and using her lyrics to explore the complex highs and lows that shape her daily life. Her goal, she has said, is not only to share her own story, but to help dismantle stigma and foster real conversations about mental illness — beyond the surface-level awareness common in social media culture.

While still early in her music career, Ray has developed a growing fan base through her online presence, including a YouTube channel where she reviews new music, analyzes lyrics, and engages with a community of fans who share her interest in pop culture and songwriting. This multi-platform engagement — alongside her frankness about personal struggles — has helped her connect with listeners who may feel out of place in more polished, curated versions of the pop landscape.

Her upcoming EP is expected to further articulate her artistic identity, both in sound and substance. Drawing on influences like Paramore, PVRIS, and Chase Atlantic, the record blends synth-pop, alt-rock, and emotional storytelling. Lyrically, it spans a wide emotional spectrum, including themes of instability, impulsiveness, self-doubt, and resilience. For Ray, music is not a polished narrative of success, but a document of messiness and growth.

In a moment when visibility and relatability are currency, Alex Ray’s willingness to foreground imperfection may be her most resonant quality. Whether through anthemic love songs, brutally honest ballads, or conversational YouTube videos, she offers a version of pop stardom that is less about spectacle and more about shared experience. As she prepares to release her debut EP and expand her presence, Ray remains committed to creating work that makes people feel seen, even — or especially — when they don’t have it all figured out.

Alex, it’s a delight to meet you. Before we dive in deep, our readers would love to learn about your personal origin story. Can you share with us a story of your childhood and how you grew up?

Alex: It’s so nice to meet you. I’m so excited. I actually grew up in a very small town called Manchester, Kentucky. It’s in the middle of nowhere. My dad was an attorney and a pastor. My mom was a teacher. We have a really big family. We grew up with my grandparents, my parents, and I’m the oldest of four siblings. I started singing in church and just fell in love with music that way. I started writing my own songs as a form of therapy, and that was pretty much my childhood. It was a very religious household, and I was trying to process those feelings and how that affected me as a bisexual woman, learning about my sexuality while growing up. Songwriting was really how I learned to deal with all of that.

That’s beautiful. Can you share with us a story of your first breaks, your first entrees into the music scene?

Alex: Yeah. I went to a very small Christian college in Kentucky, and they had a study abroad program, but it was in Nashville. I had always dreamed of moving to Nashville. It was all city lights and so much bigger than Clay County. I went on this little study abroad program, and we did the whole thing — we learned how to write songs, how to manage ourselves. We went on a little mini-tour across some colleges. I learned how to do lighting, set up a stage, all that. I’ve stayed in Nashville ever since. I took a brief hiatus from music and went to law school, which was really random. I graduated law school, practiced law, and was a commercial litigation attorney. This past year, I actually slid into my manager’s DMs and said, “Hey, I’d really love to get back into music. I’d love to just chat with you.” We hit it off. For the past year and a half, I’ve been writing, working on my EP, making music again, splitting my time between LA, and honestly, I just couldn’t stay away from it.

Wow, that’s an amazing bio. You probably have some amazing stories from your professional life, both from your music career and your time as a lawyer. Can you share with our readers one or two stories that stand out in your mind from your professional life?

Alex: As an attorney, it’s amazing what people will sue for. I was a litigation attorney, so people only made it to me when they were angry and things were going wrong, when people were losing money. We represented a very large company in the telecommunications space, and I handled their consumer litigation. I mean, we had people saying that the chip inserted in their arm from their COVID vaccine interacted with their phone, and they wanted to sue us and get an apology from our CEO. It was things like that — just crazy work. And then on the other side, we had multi-million dollar business disputes. So it really was the whole range of angry people who wanted money.

There were some cases where we took on pro bono work, helping people who were wrongfully convicted or working on restraining orders for women escaping abusive relationships. Those were definitely the most rewarding parts in my professional life. It was interesting. There were a lot of days I just sat at the computer, but then things would blow up and I was like, okay, this really is like Suits in LA. It made sense.

From my music career, I think it’s so interesting how everybody knows everybody. Even in my short time in music, it’s funny how everyone runs in the same circles. Out in LA, my new producer, John Sinclair, is from a great band called World’s First Cinema. They’re signed with Fearless Records. He knows Dasha, and one of our best friends mixes for Dasha. That person is Dasha’s sister’s bandmate in Beauty School Dropout, which is one of my favorite bands. It’s just funny how connected everyone is.

But really, my favorite stories are when John and I are sitting in the studio and we make a track and we just know it — like, we know it’s a keeper. There are a lot of tracks that get thrown out, but sometimes you get one and you know, okay, this is going on the EP. Those are the best moments of being a musician.

It’s been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Do you have a story about a humorous mistake you made when you first started music, and the lesson you learned from it?

Alex: This is true. I’ve made a lot of mistakes being a musician. My communication skills have gotten so much better. There have been so many instances where somebody on my team doesn’t know what another person on my team is doing, and you’re just balancing so many things. I think the biggest thing I’ve learned through music is to communicate — overly communicate — with everybody. That saves a lot of heartache.

I have a single coming out on May 9th called “UR KINDA LUV.” I worked with an incredible artist named SAYWHEN on it the first round. Since then, my vocal performance has gotten a lot better, and I wanted to recut the vocals. I did that with John. Somewhere during the mastering process, it ended up getting a little too compressed at the end.

I posted a TikTok with the song, and SAYWHEN texted me like, “Hey, what happened to the track?” I was like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to the track.”

We had to claw it back and fix the mistake. That was another instance of me not communicating with everybody. I’m happy it happened because the track is better for it, but when it first happened, we were so close to release, and I was like, thank God this is happening now. It’s all fine, we’re all fine, but still — I really don’t know what happened to the track. I don’t know how it got compressed that much.

So, please tell us more about this new EP and why you think we have to listen to it.

Alex: Yeah, so my single coming out is called “UR KINDA LUV,” and I think it’s kind of the predecessor to the EP. It’s about my relationship with my partner and just falling in love very fast and feeling safe with him. The EP is a stark contrast lyrically. I have bipolar disorder, and it affects my life in all ways. The EP really explores how messy I am as a person.

From when I’m in a depressive state, where all responsibilities go out the window, to when I get manic and do things I never otherwise would have done, it’s a whole spectrum of exploring my life and patterns in my life. At the same time, we’re really nailing down the sound we’ve been searching for this whole time, which is this cool synth-pop mix with more pop-rock — think Paramore meets PVRIS, and meets Chase Atlantic.

I think it’s super vulnerable. You’re going to hear the songs and be like, this is a bop, but if you listen to the lyrical content, you might be like, is she okay? I think it’s very relatable for people who feel like they don’t have it all figured out, and for people who think they’re faulty in some way. But like you said, we learn from our mistakes, and it is who we are as people. I think it’s just a great insight and maybe touches on some themes that other artists haven’t explored as deeply as this EP does.

What did you have in mind with the name UR KINDA LUV?

Alex: UR KINDA LUV came out of a place where we were actually scheduled to track vocals for another song called Boy You Aint. It’s very angry, very much like, “I broke up with this guy and I hate him with my entire heart and soul.” But I couldn’t cut it. I had just met my partner, and I was so in love. I couldn’t tap into that angry place. SAYWHEN was like, “I don’t know what to do. This has never happened before.” So, we didn’t scrap the song — it will still be on the EP — but we shifted gears and wrote a love song instead.

It’s really about how I’ve encountered so many people who have said, “You’re too much.” I’m very intriguing at the beginning of a relationship, and then they get all of me and they’re like, “No, I have to bail out.” For the first time, with my partner, their kind of love fit perfectly. It’s this journey of finding somebody who — it’s a cliché — but actually feels like home. It feels like their kind of love was made for you, like it was custom-made when they came into this world. That’s where the name came from.

That’s beautiful. It’s very sweet.

Alex: Thank you. It is! It’s soft girl summer for sure. I mean, the ending drop is a little more pop punk, and I love where that came from, but overall, it’s a very sweet song.

What has been the most challenging project you’ve taken on and why?

Alex: Probably this EP as a whole. There’s been a lot of refining my sound. We started recording it probably a year and a half ago, and there have been a lot of pivots. We did the first round, and I was like, this is too generic. This has been done before, and it’s probably not the pop space I want to be in.

It’s been a lot of hard decisions and a lot of figuring out who I want to be as an artist, which is the hardest part. I have a great team of people supporting me. They’re like, whatever you want to do, we’re going to make it happen. But the hardest thing about being an artist is figuring out what you want to do.

I don’t know what I want to do. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to make TikToks that make people care about me on the internet. I think it’s the marketing side and figuring out what your brand is. Overall, yeah, I think the biggest challenge is making people on the internet care about you and relate to you.

Beautiful. If you could take all of your music, all of your lyrics, all the sounds, put it in a blender and mix it up, what would be the overarching theme that comes out of it?

Alex: I think the theme is that I’m a really messy person. I think the song coming out on May 9th is a good prelude to that — it shows how the people in my life hold me down, make me feel loved, and make me feel stable. But putting everything else in the blender, I think it just explores how I’m messy. People are messy. People do stupid things. People make bad decisions. We all have breakups. We all forget to pay a bill. We all have our mental health struggles. It’s just imperfect. I think the perfect explanation of the EP is that I am just an imperfect person.

Okay, so this is our signature question. You’ve been blessed with a lot of success. Looking back to when you first started on the music scene, can you share five things that you’ve learned now that you wish you knew when you first started music?

Alex: Five things I learned. That’s a good signature question.

1. I think the number one thing I wish I had learned earlier on is that you’re not everybody’s cup of tea. You can’t make everybody like you. You can’t please everyone. Even people on your team, people who are on the same side as you, you’re going to hurt their feelings at some point. You’ve got to learn how to have hard conversations and maintain friendships through all of that.
2. Second, I wish I would have learned earlier not to be afraid of success. Everyone is scared of failure, but within that fear is also a fear of success — a fear of working to the point that you actually make it. A lot of times in my life, I avoided trying so I could say, “Oh, I didn’t give it my all, that’s why it didn’t work out.” It’s hard when you put yourself out there and people don’t buy your vulnerability, they don’t listen to your music, and you’ve spent hours and hours, tears, money, and work on it. Not everybody is going to care about it.
3. Third, these are hard questions. These are good questions. My therapist would be really proud of this conversation. I think number three is that it’s okay to play around with your sound and your lyrics. I love Taylor Swift — okay, that’s really basic of me to say — I have Taylor Swift tattoos on my arm right now. I think she’s a great example that you don’t have to stay in your lane. You can release “Shake It Off” and then release “My Tears Ricochet.” You can explore genres. I wish I would have learned early on that just because I make one project doesn’t mean I can’t pivot and reinvent myself. At the end of the day, the community you want to build as an artist is a community of people who care about you, not just about the trending song you have out right now.
4. Fourth, I wish I would have learned not to beat myself up when I’m having mental health struggles. Especially with bipolar disorder, I have very clear cycles. I’m a rapid cycler, which just means I have multiple depressive episodes and multiple manic episodes in a year. I wish I would have learned to work with those cycles instead of beating myself up for not doing more. In music, especially in the internet age, everyone says, “You’re not posting enough on TikTok, you’re not making enough songs, you’re not playing enough shows, you’re not reinventing yourself enough.” I wish I would have learned to just process those feelings, sit with them, and do what I could instead of absolutely destroying myself over not doing enough.
5. The fifth thing I wish I would have learned earlier is to find the fun in it always. It’s very easy to feel like it’s just a job. People don’t romanticize enough — and they should — turning their hobby into a paying career. I have a YouTube channel, and luckily that’s where a lot of my income comes from. I do music reviews on YouTube. I have a Patreon, I have a Twitch, and I have a great community that I’ve built. But it still feels like a job sometimes. When I’m sitting down on hour three of editing, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I want to throw this video and my computer out the window.” It doesn’t matter how much you love doing a thing; there will be moments when you don’t want to do it. You have to find a way to get back to the fun of it. Sometimes that means dropping everything, getting on my piano, and writing a song, even if I never use it. I think it’s very important to revisit what made you start this in the first place.

Can you share with our readers some of the self-care routines that you do to help your body, mind, and heart thrive?

Alex: Self-care. That’s a great question. My boyfriend and I are obsessed with survival shows, okay? I am not an outdoorsy girl. I hate bugs. I can’t camp. I’m useless outside. But we love watching this TV show Alone, and we will binge it. It’s just so much fun to hang out with my boyfriend and talk about the terrible decisions they’re making while we’re on the couch eating Wingstop, like we have any say in what they’re doing. Honestly, I think it’s really about having an activity with someone that makes you feel at ease, someone you don’t have to be “on” with. For me, that’s my partner and our five animals that we’re hanging out with.

I think another form of self-care is going back to my roots, like writing a song and really exploring that. I also love playing video games. Stardew Valley is my jam. I can play it for seven hours. I have a standing date with one of my really good friends, Chelsea, and we’ll play Stardew Valley for seven hours. We do it every week. For me, it’s about carving out that time and being like, “Okay, today at 7:00 p.m., I’m done. I’m not editing videos. I’m not listening to production notes. This is what we’re doing.”

On the Stardew Valley note, my kids also play it. But the thing is, at a certain point, there’s nothing else to do. How do you continue getting value from it?

Alex: I had a friend tell me that as well. I have probably 500-plus hours in the game, which is concerning to say the least (Laughs). I think the repetitiveness of it — I kind of like it. I don’t like plots in TV shows or games that are too crazy because they stress me out. With Stardew Valley, I can just go plant some stuff, pet my animals, and then that’s it, call it a day.

Alex, because of your great work and the platform that you’ve built, you’re a person of enormous influence. If you could put out an idea or inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

Alex: Wow, that’s tough too. I think I have to go with two of them, if that’s okay.

First, we are living in an environment that is completely dehumanizing LGBTQ people. As a bisexual woman who grew up in a very conservative place, and as a person with trans friends, gay friends, queer friends — they are not ambiguous people to me. I think it’s easy for people who swear off LGBTQ rights to just put us in this box, like we’re not real people, like we’re these ambiguous LGBTQ people ruining traditional family values. If anything, I would want to somehow get across to people who don’t accept us that we are real people just trying to live our lives.

On the other side of that, mental health is super important to me. As much awareness as there is now — which is great — everybody knows people have mental disorders, that it’s something that happens. But it’s still hard for people to recognize that an invisible thing they can’t see can be absolutely debilitating. In this social media culture, it’s easy for people to say, “Oh, I’m so bipolar,” about their mood swings, or “I’m so OCD.” But real, deep depression is incapacitating. Through my community, I’d like to instill some empathy with really kind conversations about how we can actually help people who are going through this and create a place of safety where they can work on it. Because I, of all people, am the hardest on myself. People with mental illnesses that incapacitate them are the hardest on themselves. There’s nothing you can say to them that they haven’t already racked their brain over a thousand times, asking, “How can I pull myself out of this?” So, while we have more awareness now, I would like to create more conversations about vulnerability where people aren’t embarrassed by the stigma. Those two things.

This is what we call our matchmaker question. Sometimes it works. Is there a person in the world or in the U.S. with whom you would like to have lunch, share a coffee, or collaborate? Because we could tag them on social media, me and you, and maybe we could connect you.

Alex: Okay. Wow, you have a lot of signatures. I love this. Amy Allen. She’s my idol. I love her so much. She was named the first woman Songwriter of the Year at the Grammys, which is an incredible feat. It’s crazy that it took this long, but she is making waves in the industry. All your favorite songs — she has written them, whether you know it or not.

I’m a nerd about songwriting credits too. It’s like Christmas every time I listen to a song. I’m like, “Ooh, I wonder who wrote this.” It’s amazing that you see the same names over and over again. We’re watching women take over this space, and I love it. I love that you look at Sabrina Carpenter’s entire album and Amy Allen is all over it. I love that she’s leading that.

I would love to pick her brain. What’s your songwriting process? Tell me everything. How did you learn to do this? How did you make the connections? What do you do when you’re stuck? Do you get on RhymeZone? I get on RhymeZone! I would love to have a conversation with her.

How can our readers continue to follow your work? How can they purchase your new single and your EP? How can they support you in any possible way?

Alex: UR KINDA LUV — UKL — is going to be out May 9th. It will be everywhere. I am being very annoying about it on social media. It will be on my Spotify page, SAYWHEN’s Spotify page, and all that. Anybody listening to that song is a huge help. We live in a world of algorithms, so anyone listening to anything and interacting with posts really helps with the reach.

You can follow me on socials. I share a lot of my music, but I also have five animals — we are cat and dog poor here — so I’m always showing content about them too. You can also follow me on YouTube. We cover a lot of your favorite albums. We just listened to Fletcher’s In Search of the Antidote. We do deep dives into lyrics because I’m a nerd about that, and we just have great conversations. I love my community — we’re all friends.

Yeah, so if you’re interested in any of that, I’m all over the internet.

Beautiful. Alex, thank you so much for your time. This has been an amazing conversation. I wish you continued success, good health, and I hope we can do this again next year.

Alex: Yeah, I’m so excited. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. I loved chatting with you. You’re so kind, and I’m excited to continue deep diving into Authority Magazine. My partner is literally in our bedroom reading all of your entries from the past little bit.

Thanks so much, Alex. I wish you an amazing day and I look forward to sharing this with you and with our readers.

Alex: Oh, thank you so much. It’s so nice to meet you. Thank you again.