Ailbhe Reddy: "By the time you hit your 30s, you’re like, 'If not now, when?'"

There are few things, Ailbhe Reddy reckons, that humans do in “such an obvious cycle” as falling out of, and falling into, “romantic love”.

“We all do that thing where you get out of one relationship and are like, ‘Love never lasts! I’m never doing that again!’” she reflects. “But then it does – and you’re there, just doing it all again.”

Embracing an approach that’s both earnest and wry, the Dublin-raised, London-based singer-songwriter charts that journey from a major, earth-shattering break-up, to somehow starting fresh all over again on Kiss Big, her third full-length release. The album – which follows 2020’s Choice-nominated Personal History, and 2023’s acclaimed Endless Affair – is her first since signing to the Philadelphia-based indie label, Don Giovanni Records.

While each project has brought a boost in both confidence and self-awareness, Ailbhe admits that it’s always complicated to release an album that’s so starkly personal, and directly inspired by real-life relationships.

“It can be a funny feeling, imposing your point of view, and your feelings, on the world,” she remarks. “And if we’re talking specifically about the other person, who you’re writing it about, it feels really unfair – because you get to say, publicly, how you feel about it. I feel self-conscious about that. I’m like, ‘Is that a bit shitty of me?’

“But you just have to get over it, otherwise you’d never release anything,” she adds. “And if everyone thought like that, there would be no art in the world. But yeah – there’s nothing more melodramatic than writing a song about it!”

While the album doesn’t (true to its title) shy away from the big emotions, it’s the in-between phases, or liminal spaces, that inspired Ailbhe most on Kiss Big – whether found in the disorientating aftermath of a break-up, or in the swirling soup of cities and service stations in the middle of a multi-date international tour.

“We were driving through Indiana or somewhere, and I had that weird cultural experience, of seeing those ‘Jesus Loves You’ billboards,” she recalls. “Seeing something like that in America is funny – because you’re like, ‘I’ve seen that on the TV! That’s in The Simpsons!’ So the line in one of the verses of the title track is: ‘Jesus billboards in the night sky.’

“I also wrote a lot of the album the summer I first moved to London,” she continues. “There was this insane heatwave. It was like 35 degrees outside, and I was just demoing tracks over and over again, with the windows open. And I was in this new city, meeting new people all the time.”

As she adjusted to her new life in London, and spent more time in the US, Ailbhe felt new creative worlds opening up around her, she says.

“I started seeing loads of plays and going to art exhibitions, and I started reading loads again,” she says. “And it sounds so obvious – if you take in more artistic worlds, you’re going to expand your own work. But that’s exactly what happened.

“I also deleted Instagram off my phone for four or five months,” she adds. “That was incredible for my creative output – to just stop looking at everything that’s happening around you, and decide what you want to do. Even on a production level, I wasn’t listening to what other people were releasing.

“So, what I was mainly influenced by, at the end of the record, was a book called Fleishman Is in Trouble, and a monologue from a play – which we were very kindly given permission to use on the last track, ‘Crave’, by the estate of Sarah Kane.”

Credit: Su Mustecaplioglu

Looking back now, she feels that it was an album of renewal, and “rebuilding”.

“I did even consider changing my name, or artist title, for this album,” she reveals. “I decided not to! But it felt like a different thing to me.”

What new artist names were in the running?

“I was just going to do ‘A. Reddy’,” she laughs. “Because my first name’s a nightmare to spell. But you know what? It is my name! People [overseas] call me ‘Alby’ a lot, which is really cute – but it’s what my friends who I’ve known for like 20 years call me, so it just sounds like they’re being really overfamiliar…”

It was also a record shaped by experimentation, with Ailbhe boldly expanding her sound, and bringing in electronic influences and synths. After trialing the new material in front of live audiences – including two special intimate shows in December 2024, where she played the unfinished album from start to finish – Ailbhe returned to Ireland, and set to work recording Kiss Big with Tommy McLaughlin.

They were joined in his Attica studio in Co. Donegal by “a whole gang of angelic pals who filtered in and out”, including Bridie Monds-Watson of SOAK, Caoimhe Hopkinson, Michael Keeney and James Byrne.

“Tommy always has repeat people coming back again, for album after album,” Ailbhe points out. “That’s because he’s a great collaborator, and a joy to work with. He’ll also never blow smoke, or be like ‘This is the best thing you’ve ever written.’ We’ll work through something for like 10 hours, and he’ll just go, ‘Pretty good.’ So I really trust his taste and work ethic.”

Kiss Big, clearly, is a special project – and as such, finding a new label home, in the form of Don Giovanni Records, was important to Ailbhe.

“For Endless Affair, I was with this label that just seemed to have a million people working at it,” she reflects. “I’m not the first artist to say that working with a big label is really odd! But if you find people who care about your music almost as much as you do, it’s amazing. And Joe [Steinhardt] from Don Giovanni was basically all-in from the start. It’s really nice to work with just a few core people – it feels way tighter.”

Ailbhe has been expanding other sides of her creative brain recently too. At the end of 2025, she swapped over to the opposite side of the interviewing process, as the presenter of ‘Salvation Songs’ on 2FM’s New Music Show – in which she spoke to the likes of SPRINTS’ Karla Chubb, Orla Gartland, Moncrieff and Shiv about the tracks that mean most to them.

She’s also currently “working away” on her debut novel, she reveals.

“I met a literary agent in the middle of last year, and signed with them in October,” Ailbhe resumes. “So hopefully we’ll put it out on submission, and see how it goes. But I don’t want to say too much in case nothing ever happens with it, and it’s really embarrassing!

“Writing has been a great thing,” she adds. “It’s something I always did, but probably didn’t have the balls to ever do anything with. But by the time you hit your 30s, you’re like, ‘If not now, when?’”

That’s the energy Ailbhe is continuing to carry into 2026 – with Kiss Big scoring rave reviews, including Hot Press’s ‘Album of the Month’, upon its release at the end of January.

Looking ahead, she’s mostly excited about finally getting to see Lily Allen perform West End Girl live in April (“I could have written a thesis on it,” she tells me. “Obsessed!”) – but she has a major homecoming show of her own coming up too, when she plays the Button Factory on May 8.

“I haven’t done a big Irish show since 2023, so I’m really looking forward to it,” she remarks. “Because all your mates come, the hometown show always just feels like you’re having your 21st again!”

• Kiss Big is out now. Ailbhe Reddy plays Night Club 101, New York (April 1); The Lexington, London (April 21); The Deer’s Head, Belfast (May 5); Róisín Dubh, Galway (May 7); and The Button Factory, Dublin (May 8).