Kendall Nicole Talks You Always Get To Me, Growing Into Her Sound and Becoming an Album Artist
When Everyday Jams first connected with Kendall Nicole, “By Proxy” was one of the songs introducing us to her world. Now, it sits inside something much bigger.
Her debut album, You Always Get To Me, brings together songs written across different stages of her life and turns them into a record about the things that linger. People, relationships, memories, frustration, longing. The kind of feelings that refuse to stay neatly in the past.
The album’s title came from a line in “By Proxy” that suddenly hit differently while Kendall Nicole and producer Aidan Klein were listening back to the record in progress.
“Things always get to me. People always get to me,” Kendall Nicole tells Everyday Jams. “No matter how many walls or facades I put up, I cannot run from that.”
Eventually, You Always Get To Me felt like the only title that made sense.
When a Song Needs to Exist
“By Proxy” is also tied to one of the biggest changes in how Kendall Nicole thinks about songwriting.
The song came together in about ten minutes after an emotion connected to someone no longer in her life had been sitting with her for days.
“The song happened to me,” she says. “I did not sit down and write a song just to write a song.”
That experience became something of a rule for her.
“When a song needs to exist, it will come out one way or another, no matter what, and I cannot force it out.”
Making the album pushed that instinct further. Kendall Nicole began thinking more closely about how the songs existed beside each other, not just how each one worked alone.
“Sometimes it feels like the record was making ME, rather than the other way around,” she says.
That attention to the full record is especially clear on “Remembering.” The instrumental track pulls together real voice memos from moments that inspired the songs, surrounded by synths and piano that Kendall Nicole describes as moving past the listener like memories.
It gives the album a moment to look backward before continuing forward.
The Song That Explains Why the Album Exists
For Kendall Nicole, “To Love You More” carries even more of the record’s story.
Before beginning the album with Aidan Klein, she had left a long term relationship that she says made it difficult to grow and imagine artistry as a real path for herself. Not long after, she met Aidan Klein, and the two decided to pursue music together.
“In short, ‘To Love You More’ tells the story of why and how the entire album exists,” she says.
That creative partnership runs through every part of You Always Get To Me. Aidan Klein solely produced the full record, while Kendall Nicole wrote the album herself aside from “Here’s Where I,” which the two co wrote, and a smaller writing contribution from Aidan Klein on “By Proxy.”
Their instincts also come from different places.
“I have always been a lyric listener, and he has always been a production/music listener,” Kendall Nicole explains.
Working together made her pay more attention to production while Aidan Klein became more tuned into the lyrics.
“I seriously won the lottery meeting Aidan,” she says. “It’s been a really special experience to create my first ever full record alongside somebody who understands me and my artistic endeavor so deeply.”
Leaving Some Things Unsaid
For a record this personal, Kendall Nicole is also careful about knowing when not to explain everything.
“Train Song” is one of those moments.
The track existed as a basic demo for some time before finally taking shape near the end of the album process. Much of it stays sparse before briefly opening into a much bigger soundscape near the end, capturing what Kendall Nicole describes as an impulse of feminine rage toward someone who hurt her.
Still, she intentionally keeps parts of its inspiration private.
“The idea of bearing your soul in your art and being as truthful as possible is very enticing, but the execution of it is frightening,” she says.
After hearing the finished track, Kendall Nicole realized someone else could hear an entirely different story inside it. She liked that possibility enough to leave some of her own story unexplained.
It is a small choice that says a lot about the way she writes. These songs belong to Kendall Nicole, but she does not need to dictate exactly what they become for everybody else.
Growing Into the World of You Always Get To Me
The album also shows how much Kendall Nicole’s sound expanded while making it.
“Eddie” developed over roughly six months, with Kendall Nicole and Aidan Klein gradually adding to the production until it became what she calls “the monster of the record.”
It is also the song she was most excited for listeners to finally discover.
“It’s a side of my sound that my listeners haven’t heard from me yet,” she says. “I’ve never made anything like it before.”
“To Love You More,” on the other hand, came together almost entirely in one day in November 2025.
That contrast feels fitting for a debut album built over time. Some songs needed months of shaping. Others seemed to know what they wanted to be almost immediately.
Finishing the project clarified something bigger for Kendall Nicole too.
“I definitely know now that I am an album artist in my heart of hearts,” she says.
She describes You Always Get To Me as both a love letter and a goodbye to a particular chapter of her life and youth. It preserves who she was during those years without asking her to remain that person forever.
For all of the record’s specificity, that is where Kendall Nicole hopes the story opens outward.
“I hope they see themselves within it,” she says, specifically pointing to young women who may recognize pieces of their own lives in the feelings she writes about.
“I hope this record shines a loving and validating light onto those people and onto the path ahead.”
You Always Get To Me feels like an appropriate title for a debut from an artist who has stopped treating sensitivity like something that needs to be hidden.
Things get to Kendall Nicole.
This time, she made an album out of it.
You Always Get To Me by Kendall Nicole is out now.
