Country Queer

Lifting up LGBTQ+ voices in country and Americana.

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

PHOTO CREDIT ROB FATAL

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.”

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A Honky-Tonk of Our Own

“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.