To Be Loved Loudly: Alex Vaughn and the Prayer for Gentle Black Love

There were nights I whispered her name like a psalm. Not because I knew her but because I needed someone to tell me I wasn’t foolish for wanting love to look like softness, not survival. Alex Vaughn didn’t burst into my life. She unfolded. Like a voice behind a door you didn’t know was open. Like a journal entry that reads like your own. Like a hug that comes a little too late, but still heals something anyway.

The first time I heard So Be It, I let it play without skipping. No multitasking. No background noise. Just me and the ache in her voice that felt like a quiet dare: believe that love is not always war. And maybe it was the way she sang, not with desperation, but with a sort of weary hope, that made me lean in. The kind of hope that says:

“I know what it is to be loved conditionally. I’m not asking for fireworks. I’m asking to be seen.”

There’s a kind of bravery in that. To not armor yourself in detachment. To not drown longing in sarcasm. To say, clearly and without performance: I want to be held. I want to be chosen. I want love that doesn’t require me to shrink. Alex Vaughn’s Voice Notes and The Hurtbook EPs aren’t polished declarations. They’re voice memos of the soul. Unmixed thoughts that flicker between bruised ego and bruised heart. They’re not linear. Neither is healing. Neither is womanhood. Neither is love.

In Do You Ever, she doesn’t beg for clarity. She just wants to know if the silence means forgetting or if it hurts him too. That song, like many of hers, isn’t wrapped in a climax. It’s a slow burn, a quiet unraveling. She gives us the kind of intimacy that doesn’t need to be loud to be felt. But here’s the thing: Black women aren’t often allowed to ache without edges. The cultural narrative insists we be fierce, funny, fiery. We aren’t supposed to ask for love, at least not like this. Not gently. Not softly. Not with tears that don’t entertain.

So when Alex Vaughn whispers her needs, when she sings her boundaries with trembling grace, when she dares to romanticize being loved without needing to prove her worth, she disrupts that. In her world, love is not earned through labor. It’s chosen. It’s deserved. That’s what makes her holy. Her music doesn’t orbit around spectacle. It centers restoration. Her voice doesn’t demand your attention, it earns your trust.

Listening to her feels like therapy in dim light. It’s the sound of peeling off emotional shapewear. Of exhaling after performing perfection. Of coming back to yourself after twisting into someone else’s idea of lovable. I remember playing So Be It on a night when I couldn’t convince myself I was enough. I hadn’t said it aloud, but the truth was there, in the way I said “it’s fine” too quickly, in the way I smiled too wide, in the way I ghosted people before they could see the real me.

Then came her line:
“I won’t fight / For a love that don’t fight for me.”

Simple. But sharp.
Like someone naming the feeling I didn’t have language for. There’s nothing revolutionary about wanting love. But in a world that rewards detachment, being emotionally available is its own quiet protest. And Alex Vaughn is leading a soft revolution.

Her work lives in that space between prayer and plea. It asks: What would it look like to be loved out loud? Not in grand gestures. But in being remembered. In someone bringing you your favorite drink without asking. In being told, You matter, before you feel yourself slipping away. And that kind of love, tender, intentional, unspectacularly consistent, is often the hardest to find.

That’s why her music feels necessary. Because it doesn’t promise fairytales. It reminds you that you don’t need to bleed to be beautiful. That gentle doesn’t mean weak. That vulnerability isn’t an open wound, it’s an open window. And if you listen close enough, her music doesn’t just tell you who she is. It tells you who you’re allowed to be.

There’s something sacred in that. Because even if we’ve grown up on stories of being strong, being tough, being unshakable, some nights, we just want to be held like something precious.

Alex Vaughn understands this.
She sings like she’s been there.
And maybe that’s why I believe her.

Look, I’m just trying to put y’all onto some music that wants you to be held, not fixed.
Start with Alex: @alexvaughn | Spotify