Exclusive: “Ready 2 Love U,” Amina Shareef Ali

Are you hitting your Pandemic Wall? 

You’re not alone. You’re ready to get out there and make things happen — whatever that means to you.

On “Ready 2 Love U,” Amina Shareef Ali is right there with you. The song is a punk-inflected Americana jam, bursting at the seams with want and self-confidence. Sure, the narrator’s got somebody special in mind, but she can pack it up and move along if need be.

The Oakland, CA based singer-songwriter has a long track record in folk, punk and everywhere in between: The Once and Future Boyfriend (2010) and Holy Rock and Roll (2011) with her band, The Radical Folksonomy; and the solo albums How to End the War (2011) and A Place to Remember the Dead (2014.)

Amina is proudly trans, and wrote a poignant essay about her experience to accompany her last single, the wry country breakup song “Farewell to My Man.”

“One of the major themes of my new record is about that point [in time], sometime after a heartbreak, when we can choose to risk loving and getting hurt again,” Ali told Country Queer exclusively.

“Especially during a pandemic, when it’s an especially hard time to forge any kind of new connection, any pang of loneliness can lead to a surge of existential dread. ‘Ready 2 Love U’ is about remembering that we weren’t given this one brief life to fuck around.”

Her album, In the Dark (Awake Of Course), will be out 3/29.