FEATURE:
Revisiting...
Joy Crookes - Skin
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I have featured this album before…
but, as it has been shortlisted for this year’s Mercury Prize (the ceremony takes place on 18th October), I wanted to come back to Joy Crookes’ remarkable debut album, Skin. Released on 15th October, 2021, it was one of the best debut albums of last year. Before getting to a couple of the reviews for Skin, there are interviews where we are introduced to Crookes and her amazing debut album. DIY spoke with her last August about her remarkable rise:
“From back when she released her debut single, aged just 17, South London’s Joy Crookes has been no stranger to hype; something that only heightened in the run up to releasing ‘Skin’, her eclectic, luxurious debut album, in October last year.
And while she certainly doesn’t take her accolades for granted – the 23-year-old already has two BRIT Award nominations and a spot on the BBC’s Sound Of poll to her name – she’s still taking things in her stride. “I don’t rely on external validation. It’s just not who I am,” she told us last year, around the release of the record. So it probably comes as little surprise that she seems remarkably chilled when DIY catches her to talk the latest addition to her musical CV: being shortlisted for the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW.
Your world tour for ‘Skin’ wrapped up recently with shows in Australia and New Zealand. How did it feel to bring this era to a close?
It was so happy and so sad at the same time. Even though we’ve still got festivals, [headlining] is my favourite. The reception that we had over there was absolutely nuts! It’s mad to go to the other side of the world, places you’ve never been before, and have that.
On paper, your career so far has gone about as well as it could have: support from the BBC, BRIT Award nods, ‘Skin’ charting at number five. What sort of mindset does that put you in as an artist?
It’s really easy from the outside to say it’s always been top form; it really hasn’t. There’s been a lot of f**king up as well, to work out what works or doesn’t. I might have hype now but I’ve 100% worked for it. I haven’t shagged any popular rockstars… Have I? No I haven’t [laughs]. I’m not trying to put all the BBC stuff down – it was really amazing when it happened – but other artists were getting a lot more hype at the time. For me, it’s always been very guerilla. I try to gauge my success from the people as opposed to the press.
So, putting that pressure aside, what was your intention when it came time to create a debut album?
I just wanted to make something I would be proud of. I didn’t think about what the reception would be; I really tried to stay in tune with my instincts. I’ve got really good music taste. I don’t mean that in an arsehole way, I mean I’m really open to listening to everything; I love all kinds of music from different time periods and across the world. I knew I needed my music to match the standard of what I think is great.
Was ‘Skin’ influenced by any artists that people might not expect?
I’m a big indie-head. That was my shit when I was like 11 – I thought I was the coolest motherf**ker walking around with a Rough Trade bag! When I was recording ‘Poison’, my drummer walked in and said “this reminds me of Young Marble Giants”, which is exactly the reference; they’re like my favourite band. The sample on ‘Kingdom’ is from White Mice by the Mo-Dettes which has a really sick drum break. They’re probably all yummy mums in Dulwich now, [but in 1979] they were all crazy white chicks making post-punk songs. All their videos are of them with these awful perms at the London College of Printing. Some of my favourite indie stuff is that kind of angry chick music.
The breakthrough hit from ‘Skin’ has been your single ‘Feet Don’t Fail Me Now’. What was the inspiration behind that song?
It’s social commentary. I was really interested in immortalising what I saw in 2020 – not only the pandemic but the Black Lives Matter movement. I was thinking a lot about armchair activism, performative activism, and how in some ways we are all guilty of it. It’s about this character who finds it easier to [blend into] a pack or a group and not have to think individually.
I was thinking about Priti Patel in the second verse. She’s a fantastic example of someone that will never stand on her own two feet. I tried to have some empathy about why she does things the way she does but that’s never gonna happen. She has to be a cog in the f**king Tory party ‘cuz that’s her way. There’s so much self-hatred in this country in people from ethnic backgrounds who feel they have to validate themselves in those spaces. It’s a really complex thing to try and write about – how I managed to do it in my ‘big pop song’ is hilarious to me!
Have you had any especially meaningful fan interactions since releasing the album?
People just be crying all the time! Also, people are nervous with me which I don’t understand. Obviously when you love music and you see your favourite artist you feel nervous [but when] people are acting like that to me I’m like ‘that doesn’t make any sense!’ Some beautiful stuff, like people losing loved ones and what not, then coming to a show [and telling me] “I promised them I would be here”. I love all of that. I love that I can be on someone’s bucket list.
You’ve made it as far as the shortlist. What would it mean to you to win the 2022 Mercury Prize with FREE NOW?
I’d love to have £25,000 in cash, that would be great. Just to hold that in your hands”.
I want to include some sections from a Vogue from December. It was a time when Joy Crookes could reflect on her year and 2021 as a whole. Among other things, she spoke about cultural identity and gentrification:
“While she has spent the past eight years building up to this moment, things seemed to accelerate over the last two, just as the world shut down. After coming fourth on the BBC’s Sound of 2020, she garnered a nomination for the taste-making Brits Rising Star Award; and following an increasingly ambitious series of videos rolled out to accompany her singles earlier this year, Crookes released Skin in October to widespread critical acclaim and commercial success, reaching number 5 on the U.K. charts.
Still, Crookes has been careful to keep things in perspective. “Social media was the only measure, and I try not to measure anything on social media, because it’s not real life,” she says of her recent breakout. “You can get as many likes or as many views [as you like], but it’s not the real thing. You don’t get that oxytocin, that genuine bond and connection with people. Real people are my biggest measure of success, and this year, just being in front of people, signing records for people, seeing what my fans look like, watching a 60-something-year-old man absolutely lose his mind to ‘Kingdom’ at the Birmingham show, that’s what I live for.”
It’s this attention to “real people” that brings her songs to such vivid life, after all. Much of the praise for Crookes’s songwriting points to her keen eye for a razor-sharp lyric, whether she’s invoking the epic or the everyday. “England’s blowing smoke, it needs attention / Could use a lick of paint, a change of color / Before they send us back across the water,” she sings on “Kingdom,” which skewers the U.K. Conservative government’s hostile immigration policies; “I’m Villanelle to your Sandra Oh / It’s only for the drama, I know,” she trills cheekily on “Trouble.” Voicemails from her uncle and recordings of her grandma also pepper the record, lending it an added touch of sentimentality and warmth.
PHOTO CREDIT: Dervon Dixon for Vogue
There’s a strong sense of humor across the album, too; one that gently recalls Lily Allen’s Alright, Still, or even Amy Winehouse’s debut album Frank, with its pithy, distinctly London bite. “It feels like everyone’s really into the deep stuff, but I also think there are some fucking funny bits on the record!” Crookes says. “I do think that the funniest people are often the ones that have been touched by depression. Humor has been a deflection at times, but it’s also been really important through very difficult situations. I think if you can have a sense of humor, then it’s not getting the better of you. And because it’s such an integral part of my personality, it had to be showcased in the music and the lyrics, you know?”
It’s this mix of the sweet and the sour that perhaps best reflects how the spirit of Crookes’s upbringing infuses the album. Crookes talks most animatedly when it comes to her love for the area she grew up in, and the threats posed to it by gentrification. “When you put this gorgeous mix of all these different people from different walks of life into an area, the food, the smell on the street, the music, it’s just... there’s no real way of explaining it,” she says. “It’s a melting pot, and there’s never a dull day. South London is a cocktail of cultures and people and sexualities and races and identities. And somehow it’s thrown together carefully—emphasis on thrown and carefully. It’s a beautiful mess, and I mean that in the most positive way.”
On the album’s second track, “19th Floor,” named after the location of her “nani’s,” or maternal grandmother’s, apartment in a south London tower block, Crookes sings over sweeping strings and epic, Massive Attack-style trip-hop percussion of how the city she knows so well is changing in front of her very eyes: “Strip the life out of these streets / It’s a daylight robbery.”
“Gentrification is a fucking daylight robbery,” Crookes affirms. “It happens right under your nose, and before you know it, you’re like, fuck, I’ve just been robbed. There are problems here, but there is so much beauty.”
Crookes showcases that beauty in her music videos, which are just as vividly realized as the music. (“I always wanted to do that, I just didn’t have the money,” she says of the audibly extravagant production on some of the album’s tracks.) In the video for “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now,” a song written in the wake of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests as an expression of frustration with the emptiness of certain corners of online activism, she rides a motorcycle in traditional Bangladeshi dress while henna painted in the Louis Vuitton monogram pattern decorates her arms. In the final set-up, she wears the billowing white sari conventionally worn by widows as an intentional subversion of the idea that a woman should ever feel defined by a man, whether in life or death.
For Crookes, the idea of representation for the sake of representation feels increasingly redundant—instead, she deploys her South Asian heritage carefully, always to make a less-expected kind of statement. “There’s a lot of Desi-inspired ware in that video, but not just because of the aesthetic,” Crookes says. “I’m trying to make a point. That song is about people who are complicit, and I’m addressing my community there. I’m looking at the British-Bangladeshi community and reminding them that we’re part of the problem as well.” The gorgeous sunflower-yellow lehenga and chunni she wore to last year’s Brit Awards carried a similarly incisive message. “It’s about rewriting narratives,” Crookes says. “When I wore that to the Brits, yes, it was beautiful, but my point there was there aren’t any South Asians in this music industry. It wasn’t about representation—it was a bit of a fuck you”.
The reaction to Skin as hugely positive. One of the best albums of last year, it is a deserved nominee for the Mercury Prize. Maybe it is more of an outside bet, but Crookes’ debut is a stunning album that everyone needs to hear. When You Were Mine was among my favourite singles of last year. I am going to bring in a couple (of the many) positive reviews. This is what DIY noted in their review:
“Nearly two years after receiving a BRITs Rising Star nomination and placing fourth in the BBC Sound of 2020 poll (a title that, in retrospect, she’s probably more than happy not to have been crowned with), South Londoner Joy Crookes’ debut arrives not as a rushed product of the hype machine but a rich, varied and considered body of work that audibly benefits from the time its had to breathe. Close and justified comparisons will obviously be drawn to Amy Winehouse, but it’s not just a similarity in old school warmth that Joy draws with her fellow Londoner; like Amy, there’s a timeless quality to ‘Skin’ that pulls equally from more nostalgic orchestral flourishes (‘When You Were Mine’) and slicker, more modern influences like the Massive Attack-echoing ‘19th Floor’. ‘Trouble’ slinks along on dub rhythms, previous single ‘Feet Don’t Fail Me Now’ pairs string flourishes with lyrics about retweeting, while the album’s title track - written alongside Matt Maltese - is a piano ballad as fittingly affective as you’d expect from the pairing. ‘Skin’ is an album worthy of elevating the singer into the realm of Britain’s classiest chart-bothering talents. It does everything a debut should, dipping into multiple pools but uniting them all with a consistent outlook and a clear voice. Joy Crookes, by rights, should be riding ‘Skin’ into the big leagues”.
I will round off with CLASH’s review of a truly wonderful and memorable debut album. I am looking forward to seeing what Joy Crookes gives us next in terms of albums. The Lambeth-born artist is one of our finest talents:
“Joy Crookes radiates a self-confidence that defines herself in terms of who she isn’t. Transcending labels with her blend of neo-soul and R&B, she takes all the hooks, choruses, and high value associated with pop and packages them into something wiser. After all, calls to soul, jazz, and Motown are considered the province of generations past, right? Wrong. Spiced up with modern production and relatable reference points, 22-year-old Crookes is the real thing.
In the past two years alone, she has been nominated for the BRITs Rising Star Award, was due to support Harry Styles pre-pandemic, and has sold out her headline shows across the UK and Europe. She imbues her music with a genuine soulfulness, all the while touching on vulnerable topics including mental health, generational trauma, politics, and sex.
Honouring her Bangladeshi-Irish heritage, ‘Skin’ places this pertinence front and centre. The title track’s lyrics are evident: "Don’t you know the skin that you’re given was made to be lived in? You’ve got a life. You’ve got a life worth living". Crookes dispenses wider encouragement and, despite the pain, remains optimistically intimate with her featherlight tones as orchestral soul-jazz weaves around her. Later in the album, her skin becomes the subject of a political narrative in ‘Power’, where she makes an ode to the female figures in her life while exploring the misuse of authority in the current social climate.
The misty-eyed haze lifts on songs like ‘Kingdom’ and ‘Wild Jasmine’ which are filled with guitar riffs and experimental sonics. Crookes twists through narratives of both new beginnings and old flames, finding value in tumultuous times. Inviting listeners to daydream, ‘19th Floor’ laments on belonging. With a string arrangement that wouldn’t feel out of place on the discography of Portishead, Crookes vocal comparably reaches untold altitudes. Across ‘Skin’, the 13 smooth jams showcase Joy Crookes not only as a vocalist or candid writer but as the new face of British soul. While many artists chase nostalgia, Crookes offers a different way forward by disregarding the traditional boundaries of classicism.
9/10”.
On 18th October, Joy Crookes’ Skin goes up against eleven other great albums from British and Irish artists for this year’s Mercury Prize. It is wonderful to see her in the mix! Given how strong Skin is, there is every chance it could walk away with the prize. I wish the amazing Joy Crookes…
THE very best of luck.