Lusanda Returns with “By The Time I Wake Up”, a Tender Anthem of Resilience and Self-Discovery
South African singer Lusanda shares “By The Time I Wake Up,” the second single from her forthcoming maxi single due this September. The track is a warm, unhurried meditation on persistence: a song that sits with the weight of hard days and still finds reason to believe in what comes next.
Written and produced alongside Anoop D’Souza (Syd, Hope Tala, Summer Walker and Sailorr) during an intimate week-long session, the song emerged from hours of conversation that felt less like a studio booking and more like catching up with a lifelong friend. “We spent the entire week getting to know each other through the music and through conversations you’d have with your bestie of 25 years,” Lusanda recalls. “It was really intimate, like we were in a cave, constantly finding rocks that brought out new ideas.”
Lusanda | SUPPLIED
Those conversations about friendships, love, insecurities, the messy middle of figuring life out eventually distilled into a single, grounding thought: “in the end, it’ll all be well.”
“By The Time I Wake Up” picks up where her previous single “Progress” left off, moving from self-discovery into realisation. Where “Progress” was about beginning to look inward, this track is the moment of clarity that follows, the understanding that growth has already been happening, quietly, even on the hardest days.
“I had to open up about how I was feeling about myself and my life in that period,” she says. “Finding that I was already working on loving myself in the present was a beautiful discovery.”
“By the Time I Wake Up” single cover | SUPPLIED
Musically, the single draws from R&B with pop inflections, gentle, spacious, and grounded in Lusanda’s signature vocal warmth. It’s a song built for the exhale at the end of a long day, for anyone who needs permission to rest and trust that morning will bring something new.
“I hope anyone who listens gets that feeling – where you can see a version of yourself and your life that you feel great about, even amidst adversity,” she says. “Hope can sometimes channel into anxiety for me, because I think of all the things I need to do to reach my goals. But it’s extremely powerful. It helps me visualise something I know can exist, and that gets me excited.”
The single is the first of three tracks on Lusanda’s upcoming maxi single, marking a new chapter for an artist who has been developing her craft with quiet intentionality.