Category: Music chat

Yes, Joy is back, and isn’t that a good thing to say?

It was way back in January 2022 in Episode 19 that we first welcomed the south Londoner to the podcast, and I’ve been anticipating her next move ever since her brilliant debut, Skin, found its way into my life. That album – Crookes was already hyped and was nominated for the Brit Rising Star award in 2020 – truly put Crookes on the map, a heady mix of twenty-something south London life as a mixed-race women – growing up with an Irish father and Bangladeshi mother – painting nights out wrapped in cigarette smoke and JD and cokes, the 35 bus, parties, family, flirting and love, all set against deeper topics of mental health struggles, identity and nods to the good and bad of multicultural Britain. Trading on smoky soul, r’n’b, 60s pop, dancehall, as much of a melting pot as the city she calls home. It won the then 22 year old plaudits and a Mercury prize nomination.

It was a firm favourite in Hornsby towers; songs are still on my daughter’s playlist. It has been in my life ever since, a post-Covid breath of fresh air that seemed to have London as a backing singer, reminding me fondly of the place I called home for over two decades. The album was toured relentlessly over the next two years, with talk of new material in the studio, as well as Crookes’ appearance at fashion shows, festivals and even a Lexus advert, enjoying her new-found fame and bringing her own down-to-earth energy wherever she was. It was hard not to see her having the time of her life and not be there vicariously with her. And I wasn’t begrudging one single moment. She was the star we could all get behind.

But where was the new music I hoped for? It took until January of this year when Pass The Salt dropped: a new single, as yet decoupled from any expectation of a new album. And it felt fresh. Tricking us with a filtered soul intro, before dropping into heavy-drummed and bass-driven verse which felt like a statement of intent: “listen to this / I’ve got plenty to get off my chest.” Joy was back, but where had she been? This was a different tip to her smoky, ballsy, fun-filled sound of 2022. This was more weighty, direct, and pointed to a hardening of the now 26 years old artist: “I got thick skin on these bones, ah / When a bitch don’t rise to rumour / Get the words stuck in your throat, throat, throat”. It also featured a rasping verse from Compton native Vince Staples, elevating it and nudging away from expectations in under three minutes. As a comeback, it asked questions: what was next, what did Joy have to say this time, and was there an album coming soon too?

A second single followed soon after, again with a big name verse to shift thinking further: this time enlisting grime superstar and actor Kano for his verse in Mathematics. A more soul standard track this time, but with the grime OG’s vulnerable words standing out with power and poignancy alongside Crookes’ lyrics and pushing things forward (as well as starring in a memorable video for the release, below). On the surface, it felt like a song about unrequited love, but it also felt like something heavier loomed in the background. It raised the interest of both new directions, and what lay behind Crookes’ next step. After third single – the up-tempo pop of ‘I Know You’d Kill‘ in March – I finally got the news I was hoping for: a new album, Juniper, was due in September, almost four years to the day from her debut. It felt a long time, and as the media rounds started for that release, things became clear that it hadn’t been a simple ride for Crookes since she got on the hamster wheel.

For all the joy of the new record – to which we’ll come – there’s significant context to Juniper’s journey from studio to airwaves. In the middle of her rush of fame, things fell apart. The late nights and VIP rooms had been fun as she found her way up through the next tiers of the industry, but it all felt disconnected, causing Crookes to step away and question what was important to her. Talking to Grace Dent in her Comfort Eating podcast, she laid bare how hard it had hit her: “.…it was a very dark time. I was extremely unwell. Not in a good place. I had to face those mental health issues: after the high, I flew down. I was lonely and isolated, like I had no connection to anyone.” If it all sounds bleak, it was. Right at the point where she should be releasing a second album, there was questions around her own health, and whether it would actually happen.

While plainly laid out in its lyrics – opener Brave is an early statement: “I’m so sick, I’m so tired I can’t keep losing my mind / I want to be brave, I want to be in love / It’s time I stopped running away. I should stay” – Crookes had to contemplate confronting the reality of where her head was at to even get to the studio. Telling DIY mag: “Touring and everything is a great distraction but I obviously had something bubbling up for years in the background I’d decided not to deal with, mentally.” Sparked by coming out of a relationship, she realised her behaviours “were actually traits of someone with very specific traumas”. She had to choose between the party and her soul, and it came down to an easy choice, but a harder road: “you can fuck around, but the play time’s gonna end at some point. No more Alaïas or Tabis, you’re gonna have to put on your fuckin’ Salomons and go on the hike!” It’s what makes the joy of Juniper even greater, given what was overcome.

I’d already been playing the singles to death through the summer – the fast-paced 60s pop of I Know You’d Kill (penned about her love for her brilliant female manager) and the sultry Carmen, eschewing the simple love and loss for the myth of unattainable beauty – and they continued to come thick and fast. The modern trait of releasing half the album in tracks that’ll get the airplay and streaming numbers does dilute the mystery of the long player. But what was revealed early didn’t remove too much from the final product. It was so good to see Crookes back, and I was ready to play Juniper on repeat on day one, enjoying how much the singles change feeling as part of a greater whole.

It was such a bright, accessible listen. Crookes always had a skill for enveloping, classy soul and pop that – whatever the subject matter – you could tap and dance too, and her own vibrancy came through in every line. Brave’s dusky overtones were classic Crookes, but it felt laced with sadness: “Sometimes it’s hard to smile / When no hurt feels against us”, the vocals as rich and heady as ever, with its tales of love and the fear laying yourself open to someone else. Her wider palette of influences – not just Nina Simone or Sarah Vaughan, but also the first wave of Bristol’s trip-hop scene and Joy Division – seep into the album, and the first half of singles-heavy tracks, reward with layers. Flying through Pass The Salt – a track that sees Crookes call out an ‘arsehole woman’ who’d spread rumours about her – and Carmen‘s playful musings on beauty and expectation. Flitting effortlessly between genres and styles that revolve around her London soul and street sounds, she plays on her heritage – Perfect Crime’s video was shot in her mother’s homeland of Bangladesh, with Crookes goofing around on the river and the back of motorbikes, seemingly happy to be out of the other side of her trauma – and confidently wears it on her sleeve.

There are more musical departures that nod to a widening of horizons, too. For all of some reviewers seeing First Last Dance as a more derivative dance/pop track, it’s a firm favourite of mine already, and shows a willingness to move away from the template (and features one of my favourite lyrics on the album – ‘Feel like Travolta / Each time I hold ya’. And far from a breezy theme, like much of the album, it had a deeper narrative, relaying the anxiety felt during the recording process. As she told DIY Mag, “I was like, ‘my chest at the moment, you know that scene where they stab [Mia Wallace] with the needle because she’s taken way too much cocaine?’ They were like ‘yeah?’ and I was like, ‘well, that’s how it feels’.” She grins. “They were like ‘well, that’s a lyric!’”.

The production on the album really worked too. It was – to me – a bit more varied, but warm, full of layers, and above all, sat back to let Crookes’ voice shine through. The two work in harmony, and there feels like an added richness to her voice too, with a few years (and a few cigarettes) more, it’s so full of character. The album was a blend of studio talent: Blue May, her most regular partner, producing Skin before this record, was back. Harvey Grant also returned, having worked with Arlo Parks previously too. Tev’n – a collaborator with Stormzy – debuted, as did Chrome Sparks. With Crookes finding a way to blend al of this together, it sounds fantastic, but never overdone.

Of all the tracks that have found their way into my head, Somebody To You is the album’s zenith to me. Perhaps the simplest song on the record, it just aches with sadness and thoughtfulness (and features a sublime Sam Fender on backing vocals). Alongside the companion video, it feels like a classic love song, but once again the truth is more uncomfortable than that. Talking to Glamour magazine, she told how it actually hints at a familial relationship that had broken down in the interim and caused Joy to rethink what her life looks like without her reliance on that relative. And that also points to a bigger narrative about being a woman: “It’s such an important question for women trying to define their full adult selves outside of relationships that no longer serve them,” Crookes said, nodding to the line “‘Who am I when I’m out of your sight? I want to see how we look apart”, as “what the album really is about.”

The themes may more broadly always bring in love in all its raw detail – Perfect Crime’s title nods to the joy love after heartbreak – and Mathematics tells of unrequited love, with its verse recorded secretly by Kano, so moved was he by the song, and A House With A Pool, a tale of an abusive ex-partner and for Crookes “a shit year when I ground myself down into the smallest version of myself”. At each turn, there is something deeper running through Juniper than simple heartbreak. Where Skin was as much about love, identity, family and a love letter to her south London homeland, Juniper feels closer, more introspective.

It’s the sound of an artist that has grown up in the spotlight, suffered and questioned the outcomes of the very thing she loves, and come back to her centre of family and friends, to find connection and a way out of the trough. She is willing to put it all out there, and there’s a bravery and determination that makes Juniper rise above the simple follow-up on the same template and marks a step forward. Closer Paris muses on the effect of a relationship with another woman, Crookes calling out “one of the best songs I’ve ever done.” There’s a freedom to her admission that it didn’t matter to her being with someone rather than worrying about her internal voice’s worries: “Kinda wanted you to be my girlfriend / Didn’t wanna fuck with no more Catholic guilt / When it comes to pride / I’d raise my heart to a girl or guy”. It feels a distance from the person she was then, a willingness to embrace the emotion. I was stood in the crowd at Glastonbury in 2022 when she wept tears of joy at where she’d come to, and I think of that now and where this album will take her, a smile on my face.

Despite so much of the record being underpinned her exposure to fame and its pitfalls, it’s never painted in a morose or self-involved way. She is willing to reveal warts and all, and call out her own failings as much as her struggles. The tunes soar so well, and her lyrics are so sharp, clever, and zippy, that you feel you are always on Crookes’ side, even as she’s telling you her darkness of the past few years, while asking you not to pity her. She values her ‘reset’, and the people around her, from her family and pre-fame friends, to her manager Charlotte Owen, for whom I Know You’d Kill is a celebration of. There’s something beautiful about the fierce independence of two women, fighting back in an industry built on the male gaze.

As much as the subject matter weighs – and rightly so – on Juniper, it doesn’t flatten the melodies, and it’s also possible to let the album wash over you, dancing to the sound, as much as deep listening, headphones on, and taking in all of its majesty under the surface. And albums working on two levels are what we all love, right?

What Juniper gives me is a follow-up from a British songwriter of class, wit and honesty that feels every bit as good as the debut, with four more years of life, emotion, understanding and recovery poured into it. For all the struggles that Crookes has gone through, her determination to come out of the other side and bring that through to us in her music is a gift for all of us. In her early releases, there may have been lazy ‘next Winehouse’ comparisons, but I can’t think of another artist like her around, so steeped in London, and the clash of cultures that have made her who she is. We are lucky to have her and I hope you’ll see some of what I feel about Juniper in your own experience.