Joy Crookes releases "Juniper"

Hot on the heels of being announced as War Child’s latest ambassador, as well as a run of sold-out in-store shows this week, South London singer, songwriter and cultural powerhouse Joy Crookes has today unveiled her breathtakingly candid sophomore album Juniper.

Heartbreaking, humorous, provocative and provoking in equal measure, Juniper continues to establish Joy as one of the country’s most outstanding vocalists and one of our most gifted songwriters. She’s a once-in-a-generation artist. If Joy’s debut album Skin was a lyrical statement of selfhood, then Juniper zeroes in even further on the fabric that makes Joy the artist, the woman, the human that she is. Juniper – an evergreen tree that can survive under the harshest of conditions or, as Joy puts it, “a low maintenance plant” – examines body politics, envy, the hypocrisy of the music industry, abusive relationships, queer love, loss, and mental health struggles as well as the joy and very real fear of falling truly, madly, deeply in love. “This album I think is more nuanced,” says Joy. “I’ve really zoomed in as opposed to zoomed out of a situation. With Skin, I was very present, but it was looking at things from a more macro lens. With Juniper every situation is visceral and I’m very much in it. It’s very much me in the centre of it all.”

The album was written in two mind states: high and low. The early stages of the record began to take shape in 2022 as Joy was enjoying the success of Skin. “I wrote most of the lyrics when I was really happy. When I say happy, I mean, I was quite hedonistic. I was impulsive and having a really fun time. A bit too much fun.” She began with the melodies, “snatches of something that would repeatedly spin around”, spending months or more shuffling thoughts and sounds in her mind, taking long walks to make sense of the words and ideas that were tumbling out.

Then, at the beginning of 2023, Joy met someone and began to fall in love. What should have been a happy time instead triggered a mental health crisis. “I’ve never been this scared to fall in love. I felt really traumatised. It made me realise how little trust I had in people at that time. This relationship wasn’t based in ego or vanity; this was true love. He met me when I was full of feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness and defectiveness – yet chose to love me for who I actually was. He was choosing the truest, the ugliest form of me. Which made me terrified. It brought up all my deep and dark insecurities and I had to face that, a little bit, in falling in love with him.” Joy was ill for almost two years, recovering in Autumn 2024, around the same time the album neared completion. There were times when recording Juniper that she would be physically sick from anxiety; but the booth remained her space of solace. “I just couldn’t be left alone in my thoughts. I needed to be in the studio. What you hear was what was going on because I was unwell. I was in the fucking trenches so I’m live and direct from the trenches.”

Written with a stripped-back approach and produced by long-time collaborators including Blue May (Kano, Jorja Smith), Tev’n(Stormzy) and Harvey Grant (Arlo Parks), Juniper features standout guest appearances from Vince Staples on the incendiary ‘Pass The Salt’ and Kano on the bittersweet confessional ‘Mathematics’. Lead singles like ‘Pass The Salt’ and ‘I Know You’d Kill’ showcase Crookes’ lyrical agility – blending poetic detail with razor-sharp wit. Meanwhile, the euro-pop inspired ‘First Last Dance’ channels euphoric melodies to mask deep emotional struggle, and the cinematic ‘Perfect Crime’ sees Joy fully self-actualise in the style of a Western showdown. On ‘Paris’, the closing track, Joy reflects on a formative queer relationship: “Something I feared so much finally, actually felt like love.” It’s a sentiment echoed across Juniper – a record that captures the beauty and brutality of emotional openness.

Juniper lands off the back of Joy's outstanding performance on Glastonbury's Other Stage on the Sunday afternoon of the festival which was a roaring success. A packed crowd joined Joy for a powerful rip through her catalogue including lots of new music and she was lauded with praise from the likes of Vogue, The Guardian, The Times, Dazed, The Independent, The BBC, ELLE more. Following a run of sold out in-store shows, she returns to the live stage at the backend of the year for a full UK & EU headline tour.

Joy Crookes is performing at the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels on Monday the 24th of November.