Backstage with Joy Crookes

“Where’s my spice mix?” Joy Crookes is already on the go when I find her backstage, orbiting between narrow rooms and floating banter ahead of her sold-out Melkweg show (one of two, actually). It’s flu season, a bandmate might be going down, and Joy is clocking everything at once. She offers me snacks with a perfectly warm insistence, and her attentiveness feels instinctive rather than performative: comradely, slightly chaotic, protective. If you’ve spent time with her music, this energy registers immediately.

Crookes’ take on R&B and neo-soul carry the grain of unfiltered humanity — frayed edges, political weight, humour used as armour. She writes from the chest and her voice does the work of translation, elastic and commanding. Onstage, amidst the (in the best way) heart-crushing performance, she shouts a fan with “JOY” tattooed across his arm. She nods to Sinéad O’Connor’s legacy with a cover of Black Boys on Mopeds, calling out the genocide in Palestine. Minutes later, she’s laughing about being on her period while wearing a see-through dress. This is Joy Crookes as she presents herself: tender in her openness, serious without solemnity, political in a way that restores.

How are you feeling today? How’s the tour?
I’m good. The tour’s been great. We’ve just started Europe, but it’s been really good. 

Do you have any pre-show rituals?
At the moment, we huddle together before the show, and I say an expression that isn’t real. But that sounds like it could be real.

And it has to come to you on the spot?
Yeah, you have to do it on the spot. It has to sound profound, but not make any sense.

Can you give me an example?
I think the first one I did was “When the blind man speaks, you know no end.”

I’m going to chew on that one.
Nothing to chew on. It’s like super pseudo. We just come up with the most pseudo thing that we can say and then run with it basically.

Do you ever do that in your lyrics?
Yeah, when I’m writing songs, definitely. But then I change them to actually make sense

That sounds fun. Could you tell me a bit about what’s been up in these four years between your latest album and Juniper?
I wrote the album really fast. It took me about a year. There were two weeks I spent where I really wrote most of it. I was not too well at the time after writing it. But I was also the happiest I’ve ever been at one point. It had been four years, so lots of things had happened. Juniper was done last year, but it just took a really long time to release. I can’t answer why. I think people thought that I really had to take a break or something. But I’m not really that much of a break person. I work really hard. So yeah, a mixture of things. Which is a boring answer, but that is true. 

Do you feel like any particular feelings or themes catalysed this release?
I think that songwriting is interesting because, and I can’t speak for everyone, but I feel like there is an essence when you write where you foreshadow what’s going to happen in your life, or what you have a feeling about. Sometimes you find the answers in the writing. So I think songs are always a catalyst for me. If I write a song, I feel very attached to, it’s usually either trying to tell me something or I’m concluding a situation. 

Is foreshadowing kind of like a manifestation for you? Or is it more in the sense of getting clarity?
No, I would say just foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is psychic; it’s telling the future. So I think no, it’s not like a manifestation. For me, it just ends up happening. It’s not necessarily even like I want some scenarios to happen, because they can be really dark things too. But it’s like I know it’s coming. I think it’s easier for me to confront darkness sometimes in music, rather than on my own, in my own brain. 

I had a question about that actually. You really don’t shy away from heavy topics in your music and confront a lot of sides of yourself. How do you deal with looking at the uglier sides that we all contain?
If something is really apparent, I’m not very good at ignoring it. I’m quite confrontational, but not in a way that is necessarily aggressive. I just think that if there was an awkward silence, I would be the first one to fill it. That’s just my inclination. So, if you take that for music, if there is something on my mind that I can not think about, I have to scratch that itch. There is no way not to scratch that itch. The process for me is kind of compulsive. Whatever I have written is heavy because it was obviously deeply on my mind at the time of writing it. Or, it felt necessary for me to say, but it’s just like a compulsion. It’s not because I think that other people have to hear it, I just feel like I need to get it off my chest. I find it really hard, actually. Hard exterior, soft interior, kind of thing. It’s interchangeable. There are some things I absolutely stand by within myself, but it may look like I am flimsy on the outside. Then there are times when I look like I am tough or strong, but I feel completely like a child on the inside. I just think it’s the human condition fundamentally. These things aren’t easy to talk about, but for some reason, with music, it just feels like I need to do that. 

Do you feel like your perception of yourself changes through that?
Yes, I can be really confident. I can get really insecure about these things. It’s very vulnerable at the end of the day, so there are times when it feels empowering, and there are times when it feels sad. 

On Carmen, for example, I resonated so much with the feelings of jealousy towards other women driven by Eurocentric beauty standards. Rationally, I’m way past that, and I hate feeling like that, but those thoughts still creep in.
But I think, look. When you admit that’s what’s going on, it makes it so much smaller. Like in any instance where we have been jealous. Finally, when we just say “Fuck. Do you know what? I just feel jealous.” It just makes you more human. Everyone can fucking relate to that. It’s so stigmatised. But there’s nothing really wrong with it. I think the issue after jealousy is envy, and that’s where it gets a little bit sinister. Obviously, you don’t want it to boil to that, and that’s probably why I wrote Carmen. It could have eaten me up, but I spat it out. 

Gotta cut it early.
Yeah. You have to cut it early. And do you know what? It doesn’t necessarily mean the jealousy goes away, but it becomes smaller. Therefore, it’s easier to manage. But I’ve struggled with jealousy my whole life, and not just in the way I look, but like everything. There’s always someone smarter or funnier or more talented or more successful. We live in a hyper-capitalist society. So obviously, we’re going to feel competitive in a way that doesn’t feel friendly or helpful. Then, if you add any kind of existing, you know, culture and tradition in ways that you’ve grown up. It can just fucking make it worse. I think my way of processing that is to say it out loud.

Yeah. I imagine it also applies to a wide range of feelings. Not only jealousy, but anything.
Yeah, but I think jealousy and guilt are the ones that eat you up if you don’t say something. So you have to address those, you know? 

What I really love about your work and your presence generally is that you’re very outspoken. There’s no bullshit with you. At the same time, there is this duality that you show with so many more softer, vulnerable sides. It’s dealing with a lot of heavy things in a very soulful way. What is that balance like for you?
I find it either incredibly difficult or super empowering. It depends on the day sometimes. Like yesterday, I felt really depressed, and I just had these really dark feelings where I felt very alone. Sometimes, I think if you’re outspoken, it makes you feel really alone and misunderstood. Although I do have supportive people around me, when you look at the music industry, I don’t think that being outspoken is necessarily the status quo right now, if I’m being totally honest. I’m not trying to drag anyone, but when I look at a lot of musicians, it makes me feel really, really isolated. I feel like I’m the crazy woman, that kind of trope. It’s so funny because half the time it makes me feel amazing. I’m like, “I don’t give a fuck.” Then there are other times where I just feel like, “Oh, my God, have I isolated myself? Would it have been easier if I had just kept my mouth shut?” My biggest song is about that. 

Feet Don’t Fail Me Now?
Yeah, it’s about this person who wants to try to do better, and it’s just so much easier to be quiet. If you take it away from being a musician and you think about the landscape of the world we live in right now, and how ostracised you can be if you, for example, don’t support the genocide. That’s hard. And it’s the hardest for Palestinians. But if you’re someone here that’s going, ”Hey, that’s wrong.” There have been times in the last two years when you would be completely fucking ostracised for that. I experienced that, and it’s fucking terrifying. But at the same time, there’s so much pride in it, too, because I would much rather be the person who spoke than just kept my mouth shut. So I think it’s like jealousy. It’s human and natural. Embarrassment and shame and fear are human and natural. But I would be lying to you if I were like, “Oh, yeah,  I feel so confident being so outspoken.” Like I don’t. I feel scared of it a lot of the time. And I think it makes the people who love me around me feel scared sometimes, too. 

Thank you for sharing that. It’s very admirable, but also something that everyone should be able to do if they have the platform and the voice.
I just feel like when men do it, they’re celebrated. But if women do it, we’re not. We’re difficult, or we’re complaining too much, or we’re like witches or something.

Do you feel like your identity sometimes gets misinterpreted because maybe at the surface level, your music doesn’t per se fit the idea of someone who is very outspoken? Do you see a dichotomy in that?
No, I think I sound like me in my music. I think the only way for that to be confusing is if you’re not listening to the lyrics. 

Yeah, it’s interesting because I naturally don’t hear lyrics at all when I listen to music unless I really tune in. And then I focus, and it’s like unlocking a whole separate layer.”
I love that. Because I care about the music as well. I care about the way it sounds. But I’m aware that lyrics don’t come to people first necessarily. I think you can still hear the pain in my voice. Even if you don’t know what I’m saying. Which is why I can listen to, like, Pakistani music and not know what the fuck they’re saying. But I’m like, “Oh, my god, I feel that so much.” You know?

Absolutely. How do you make yourself feel heard?
In the industry or in my life? 

Both.
I think in my life, I feel like humour has always been really necessary for me. Humour’s funny because it’s like half-deflection, half attention-seeking. In music, just trying to stick to my guns and trying to stick to what I think is right. Just having some morals. In the studio, just learning how to produce, as there have been situations where I feel like I’ve been overlooked. Generally, I need to have the terminology and the language so I can articulate myself, and if someone decides not to hear me, I know I was explaining it in the best terms possible. So it’s a you problem, not a me problem.

You know you did your best.
Yeah, I tried, you know. So I think that you can’t control being heard because a lot of people are not trying to hear you as well. You have to try the hardest to believe in yourself.