Dublin-born songwriter Ailbhe Reddy has announced her forthcoming album Kiss Big, arriving January 30 via her new label home Don Giovanni Records. Alongside the announcement, Reddy shares the raw and restless new single So Quickly, Baby, paired with a striking video directed by Su Mustecaplioglu.
Described by Reddy as “the meltdown song, the album’s neurotic heartbeat,” “So Quickly, Baby” captures the emotional whiplash of post-breakup life—the tension between wanting to be gracious and wanting to scream. Verses strive for composure while the choruses crack open the song’s core question: How are you already fine, and when will I be? It’s a familiar ache, rendered with sharp self-awareness and an unfiltered honesty that has become Reddy’s signature.
Kiss Big is a breakup album, but not a neatly packaged one. It lives in the aftermath—the liminal space where identity dissolves and slowly reforms. Written across Dublin, London, New York, and the American Midwest, the record traces love, loss, numbness, and renewal with a diaristic intimacy that feels both deeply personal and quietly universal. Reddy’s songwriting presses on emotional bruises without flinching, finding clarity in confusion and humor in despair.
Drawing inspiration from Fleishman Is in Trouble and Sarah Kane’s Crave, Reddy blends confessional folk with indie-rock urgency, echoing the emotional gravity of artists like Julia Jacklin, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus. It’s music that sits comfortably in contradiction—soft-spoken yet devastating, restrained yet burning.
Reddy’s previous albums Personal History and Endless Affair earned widespread acclaim, including a Choice Music Prize nomination and praise from Pitchfork, The Guardian, Uncut, Clash, and Hot Press, the latter calling her “an international sensation in the making.” With performances at Glastonbury, SXSW, and The Great Escape under her belt, Kiss Big feels like a confident step forward from an artist fully in command of her emotional vocabulary.
Ultimately, Kiss Big is about endings, almosts, and the fragile beginnings that follow. It’s the sound of coming apart and carefully stitching yourself back together—an unflinching, tender breakup record from one of Ireland’s most compelling voices right now.
Ailbhe Reddy – Tour Dates
- Nov 7, 2025 – New York, NY @ Cafe Wha?
- Nov 8, 2025 – Philadelphia, PA @ Milkboy
- Apr 21, 2026 – London, UK @ The Lexington
- May 8, 2026 – Dublin, IE @ Button Factory
“So Quickly, Baby” feels like the emotional nucleus of KISS BIG, that “neurotic heartbeat” you mentioned. Can you walk us through the moment or experience that first sparked this song?
I finished this song in two pieces. The lyrics were written in my bedroom in London while I was reading bell hooks All About Love, so I think the verses are very peaceful and kind of nostalgic. I was never happy with any chorus idea for it until I spent a few days writing in LA. I was noodling around and feeling a bit less peaceful because I heard about how my ex had completely moved on with someone else. I was in complete disbelief and even though I was happy for them on the surface, I guess my subconscious had something else to say about it. So I started playing the chorus which is all anger and disbelief. It felt totally at odds with the verses but it worked. I often feel stuck between swallowing my own feelings in an attempt to be the good guy and being so hurt I can’t bear it. That song, to me, perfectly encapsulated the realisation that you’re far more hung up on the whole thing than you want to be. You can’t circumvent heartbreak, you can’t logic and reason and self help book your way through it. You have to actually feel it.
I finished this song in two pieces. The lyrics were written in my bedroom in London while I was reading bell hooks All About Love, so I think the verses are very peaceful and kind of nostalgic. I was never happy with any chorus idea for it until I spent a few days writing in LA. I was noodling around and feeling a bit less peaceful because I heard about how my ex had completely moved on with someone else. I was in complete disbelief and even though I was happy for them on the surface, I guess my subconscious had something else to say about it. So I started playing the chorus which is all anger and disbelief. It felt totally at odds with the verses but it worked. I often feel stuck between swallowing my own feelings in an attempt to be the good guy and being so hurt I can’t bear it. That song, to me, perfectly encapsulated the realisation that you’re far more hung up on the whole thing than you want to be. You can’t circumvent heartbreak, you can’t logic and reason and self help book your way through it. You have to actually feel it.
You describe the track as a tug-of-war between grace and chaos. How do you personally navigate that space when writing — the urge to stay composed versus the temptation to unravel completely?
Writing is where I get to unpack things. I think every songwriter is the same in that respect. Your unconscious comes to the fore and sometimes you find yourself writing things you never even knew you were worried about or cared about. It’s the one place in my life where I can’t hide from how I actually feel. In life, I’m more measured. I tend to hold things in until I can make sense of them and keep things bottled up. Songwriting is where I let the messy feelings speak up. I don’t think I hold back from emotional honesty in my writing to be honest. I usually write exactly what I’m feeling, whether that is a complete unravelling or something with more tension. As long as there are no lyrics that might be hurtful to anyone else, that’s how the song goes out.
Writing is where I get to unpack things. I think every songwriter is the same in that respect. Your unconscious comes to the fore and sometimes you find yourself writing things you never even knew you were worried about or cared about. It’s the one place in my life where I can’t hide from how I actually feel. In life, I’m more measured. I tend to hold things in until I can make sense of them and keep things bottled up. Songwriting is where I let the messy feelings speak up. I don’t think I hold back from emotional honesty in my writing to be honest. I usually write exactly what I’m feeling, whether that is a complete unravelling or something with more tension. As long as there are no lyrics that might be hurtful to anyone else, that’s how the song goes out.
KISS BIG isn’t a clean breakup record — it lives in the messy middle. What made you want to explore that ambiguity rather than the more polished narratives we often hear in love-and-loss albums?
KISS BIG explores the experience of moving on from the relationship that you thought was The Relationship. You know the one where you’re like, yep, we’ll be together for the long haul and do all the relationship milestones. No question! It’s about the shock of that. The realisation that you’re untethered from this person who was the centre of the universe for you for years and trying to grab hold of who you are without them, who you’ve become with them, who you will become as you outgrow them. Most people don’t just break up and move on — it’s a long process that loops back on itself. You’re still half in love, half furious, half pretending you’re fine. You date other people and make the same mistakes or new mistakes and you learn and learn and learn about yourself in ways you never could have without that break up. I didn’t want to write the cinematic ending where someone walks away stronger or someone wins. The album is about that cycle that we’re all in of trying to find someone. It’s about that kind of insane optimism people have about love. We have it more about love than we do with anything else. I can’t think of another thing people across the world are more blindly optimistic about than romantic love. We seek the connection, the person to make us feel safe, and if it blows up in our faces, and we tell ourselves we’ll never love again… we still end up finding ourselves back at the start with someone new and unexpected. I wanted to capture that journey.
KISS BIG explores the experience of moving on from the relationship that you thought was The Relationship. You know the one where you’re like, yep, we’ll be together for the long haul and do all the relationship milestones. No question! It’s about the shock of that. The realisation that you’re untethered from this person who was the centre of the universe for you for years and trying to grab hold of who you are without them, who you’ve become with them, who you will become as you outgrow them. Most people don’t just break up and move on — it’s a long process that loops back on itself. You’re still half in love, half furious, half pretending you’re fine. You date other people and make the same mistakes or new mistakes and you learn and learn and learn about yourself in ways you never could have without that break up. I didn’t want to write the cinematic ending where someone walks away stronger or someone wins. The album is about that cycle that we’re all in of trying to find someone. It’s about that kind of insane optimism people have about love. We have it more about love than we do with anything else. I can’t think of another thing people across the world are more blindly optimistic about than romantic love. We seek the connection, the person to make us feel safe, and if it blows up in our faces, and we tell ourselves we’ll never love again… we still end up finding ourselves back at the start with someone new and unexpected. I wanted to capture that journey.
The album moves across Dublin, London, New York, and the American Midwest — four places with very different emotional weathers. How did those cities shape the sonic or emotional textures of the record?
Each place brought a different kind of solitude. Dublin was home but felt too small, like I’d outgrown the version of myself there. London was exciting and provided so much growth, but it was also overstimulating. learned a lot about who I was through that chaos. New York was huge and I felt so anonymous, which was liberating. And the Midwest, with all the time spent driving between shows, gave me the stillness to reflect. You can almost hear that geography in the songs and the lyrics. They start tight and slowly open up into something more spacious and reflective, written in hotel rooms, houses, and on the road. There was this emotional upheaval of the break up, but then the literally uprooting of my life when I moved and began travelling around. What I was feeling was reflective in how I was feeling. I mean it was a real classic, go through a seismic break up, move to a new city, reinvent yourself, get a new haircut and a bad piercing or two. I really moved through the break up tropes!
Each place brought a different kind of solitude. Dublin was home but felt too small, like I’d outgrown the version of myself there. London was exciting and provided so much growth, but it was also overstimulating. learned a lot about who I was through that chaos. New York was huge and I felt so anonymous, which was liberating. And the Midwest, with all the time spent driving between shows, gave me the stillness to reflect. You can almost hear that geography in the songs and the lyrics. They start tight and slowly open up into something more spacious and reflective, written in hotel rooms, houses, and on the road. There was this emotional upheaval of the break up, but then the literally uprooting of my life when I moved and began travelling around. What I was feeling was reflective in how I was feeling. I mean it was a real classic, go through a seismic break up, move to a new city, reinvent yourself, get a new haircut and a bad piercing or two. I really moved through the break up tropes!
You’ve cited Fleishman Is in Trouble and Sarah Kane’s Crave as inspirations. What drew you to those works, and how did their emotional landscapes seep into your songwriting?
Both deal with love and identity in this really unflinching, real way. They’re about the collapse that comes when you try to define yourself through someone else. KISS BIG is about trying to find out who the hell I actually was after breaking up with someone I’d spent the majority of my twenties with. You become so defined by being in a couple and by that person that moving away from that can be equal parts liberating and terrifying. Fleishman is one of my favourite novels ever because I just love the narrator’s take on how we can blame the person we are with for who we’ve become, thinking we’ve lost ourselves in them, when really… we just changed and we wouldn’t be the same even if they weren’t there. I wanted KISS BIG to hold that message. The desire to be loved with the discovery that another person can’t save or define you.
Both deal with love and identity in this really unflinching, real way. They’re about the collapse that comes when you try to define yourself through someone else. KISS BIG is about trying to find out who the hell I actually was after breaking up with someone I’d spent the majority of my twenties with. You become so defined by being in a couple and by that person that moving away from that can be equal parts liberating and terrifying. Fleishman is one of my favourite novels ever because I just love the narrator’s take on how we can blame the person we are with for who we’ve become, thinking we’ve lost ourselves in them, when really… we just changed and we wouldn’t be the same even if they weren’t there. I wanted KISS BIG to hold that message. The desire to be loved with the discovery that another person can’t save or define you.
Your lyricism has always been praised for its emotional precision. When writing something this personal, how do you decide what to reveal and what to protect?
I don’t think about protection while I’m writing, unless I’m worried that a lyric might hurt someone else’s feelings, I just try to be honest I’ve released enough music to know that this fascinating thing happens when you put a song out into the universe.It stops belonging entirely to you. Each person who hears it takes a piece of it, they project onto it, their experiences or imagined version of what happened, and that’s really freeing. It becomes less personal, more universal. That’s part of the catharsis. No matter how specific and personal you write, others will always see themselves in it.
I don’t think about protection while I’m writing, unless I’m worried that a lyric might hurt someone else’s feelings, I just try to be honest I’ve released enough music to know that this fascinating thing happens when you put a song out into the universe.It stops belonging entirely to you. Each person who hears it takes a piece of it, they project onto it, their experiences or imagined version of what happened, and that’s really freeing. It becomes less personal, more universal. That’s part of the catharsis. No matter how specific and personal you write, others will always see themselves in it.
There’s a quiet universality to KISS BIG — it feels deeply personal yet oddly collective. Did you consciously write with that “shared heartbreak” lens, or did it emerge naturally in the process?
Firstly, thank you! And secondly, it just happened naturally. When you write something true to your own experience, people tend to recognise themselves in it. Heartbreak, loss, self-reconstruction are all pretty communal themes. I wasn’t trying to be universal, but I think when you stop censoring yourself, that’s usually when the songs connect the most.
Firstly, thank you! And secondly, it just happened naturally. When you write something true to your own experience, people tend to recognise themselves in it. Heartbreak, loss, self-reconstruction are all pretty communal themes. I wasn’t trying to be universal, but I think when you stop censoring yourself, that’s usually when the songs connect the most.
The album title KISS BIG feels both tender and defiant. What does that phrase mean to you, and why did it feel right as the anchor for this new chapter?
It’s funny, KISS BIG is the penultimate track, and for the longest time it was intended to be the final track. But it came from my partner saying to me once, “sorry, I kiss big” after getting lipstick on my cheek. I thought it was a sweet, kind of funny thing to say. I kept coming back to the phrase. I wrote the song as a kind of little joke song and I played it at a show once and people cried. It was really surprising. As I finished the album it became clear that KISS BIG as a phrase was emblematic of the message of the album. It means simply, go to the party, take the trip, introduce yourself to the pretty girl, go on the date, kiss big, feel it all, because it might not come around again. It’s about being all in even when you know that it might end. After a breakup, there’s this temptation to close yourself off, but I wanted to do the opposite. KISS BIG felt like a phrase that held both the ache and the optimism.
It’s funny, KISS BIG is the penultimate track, and for the longest time it was intended to be the final track. But it came from my partner saying to me once, “sorry, I kiss big” after getting lipstick on my cheek. I thought it was a sweet, kind of funny thing to say. I kept coming back to the phrase. I wrote the song as a kind of little joke song and I played it at a show once and people cried. It was really surprising. As I finished the album it became clear that KISS BIG as a phrase was emblematic of the message of the album. It means simply, go to the party, take the trip, introduce yourself to the pretty girl, go on the date, kiss big, feel it all, because it might not come around again. It’s about being all in even when you know that it might end. After a breakup, there’s this temptation to close yourself off, but I wanted to do the opposite. KISS BIG felt like a phrase that held both the ache and the optimism.
You’ve performed on stages like Glastonbury, SXSW, and The Great Escape. How has touring and performing these intimate songs live reshaped your relationship to them?
Performing them has taken the sting out of them. When you sing something night after night, it stops being about your own heartbreak and becomes this shared experience with the audience. It’s without a doubt my favorite thing about writing music.
Performing them has taken the sting out of them. When you sing something night after night, it stops being about your own heartbreak and becomes this shared experience with the audience. It’s without a doubt my favorite thing about writing music.
Finally, when listeners reach the end of KISS BIG, what do you hope they take with them — a sense of closure, renewal, or maybe just the permission to feel messy too?
I hope people leave the album feeling hope. Feeling like no matter how bad that breakup was, no matter how seismic that event was. No matter how angry you are, how moved on they are… whatever. No matter what it’s okay to still be figuring things out. It’s okay to take however long you need. Life isn’t a movie where you gain closure, it’s an album with an ambiguous ending but a lot of understanding. Nothing was a waste of time. And no matter how much you swear you’ll never love again, against your better judgement, you probably will.
I hope people leave the album feeling hope. Feeling like no matter how bad that breakup was, no matter how seismic that event was. No matter how angry you are, how moved on they are… whatever. No matter what it’s okay to still be figuring things out. It’s okay to take however long you need. Life isn’t a movie where you gain closure, it’s an album with an ambiguous ending but a lot of understanding. Nothing was a waste of time. And no matter how much you swear you’ll never love again, against your better judgement, you probably will.
