[Cover photo credit to Alex Burholt]

Brooklyn-based songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and DJ Blue Mena (they/them) has announced their sophomore album, Pure Luck, out January 22, 2026, via Roc Nation Distribution, and has shared the double single “Jamie” and “Troublemakers.”

The songs introduce an album where “hazy dream pop and warped electronic production frame stories of queer romance, self-reckoning and the chance encounters that bring people together.”

“Jamie” opens a two-part love story inspired by James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. The song focuses on David, the novel’s conflicted protagonist, singing, “You can’t stop the wind of your life.”

Mena shares:

Jamie is my version of David, or at least the parts of David that I relate to, a person that is running away from his problems and swept up in the wind of his own life. This one goes full dreamy dance pop and feels like a nice compliment to my song ‘Jewels’ that I released a few years back.

Self-directed and shot by Mena, the accompanying “Jamie” video brings the song to life through a dreamy collage of New York City life.

Meanwhile, “Troublemakers” turns toward “New York nightlife and the queer outcasts who find freedom in warehouses and club bathrooms.” The song “explores the darker side of those spaces and the refuge they offer.”

Mena says:

This is my favorite songwriting on the album. It’s about a lot of things… being trans in new york, trying to exist in nightlife, drugs, sex. Queer kids up to no good because they have nowhere else to be.

Written between LA backhouses, Brooklyn, XL Recordings’ Manhattan studio and upstate New York, Pure Luck emerged during a period of movement and transition. Mena mixed the album alongside Mikaelin Bluespruce, known professionally as MixedByBlue (Solange, Blood Orange), with saxophone from Levon Henry and pedal steel from Dustin Deetz.