There is a question Joy Oladokun she often wonders when reflecting on her career, “If Nina Simone had the internet, what would she do with it?” he ponders. “So what kind of Mavis Staples-meets-Azealia Banks tweets would we have gotten from her?”
The High Priestess of Soul isn't the only artist folk pop artists are thinking about: throughout her conversation with Bulletin boardOladokun drops names ranging from Big Mama Thornton to Paul McCartney to Big Freedia. But the artists he often thinks about, he says, are the ones whose names he doesn't know.
“I think a lot of my music comes from a place of knowing that not all black queer people have lived this long or come this far,” he explains. “I feel like I'm struggling with both the idea of progress, the reality of progress, and the cost of it.”
These sentiments worth a career can be heard on Oladokun's stunning new album Observations from a crowded room (out today via Amigo Records). Written and produced by Oladokun within 15 months of his 2023 LP Proof of Lifethe new record sees the singer-songwriter grappling with her current place in the music industry and the world at large. Using electronic flourishes to punctuate her pointed composition, Oladokun examines why it seems social progress in the music industry is always two steps forward, one step back.
The idea for the record came after a whirlwind of touring in 2023 — after skipping summer festivals and opening for John Mayer and Noah Kahan's tours, Oladokun found herself at the end of a grueling schedule, sitting by a river with her guitar somewhere in Oregon.
“I was in the mushrooms,” he giggles. “Then I was going through emotionally difficult times. And when the shrooms hit, I saw this moose — and right there, I just wrote the first song on the album.”
This song, “Letter from a Blackbird,” provides the central argument for the album in its first minute. “These days I sure regret how much I've given/ I feel my patience running out, I hear the water singing to me,” she sings, accompanied only by a vocal chorus of her own vocals. “Blackbird: what did you think you'd encounter here in the wild?”
Throughout the record, Oladokun struggles with managing the expectations of her community (hip-hop's “Hollywood”), examining the history of marginalized artists (the “Strong Ones”) and her own desire for recognition from industry (the fiery folk ballad “Flowers”). Punctuating these songs are short “observations”, interspersed throughout the work that see Joy speak directly to her audience and tell them, without any prompts, how she feels.
While she has become known in industry circles for her incredible lyricism, Oladokun acknowledges that Observations it's something completely different from her previous albums. “In some independent way, Proof of Life it was a democracy and this was more of a dictatorship,” he says. “When you work with [other songwriters]sometimes you have to sacrifice an emotion or pull a punch just to get something done. The benefit of just making it was that, for 40 minutes, I could just go unfiltered. I'll give you the choruses and the hooks that you can keep, but I also want to be as honest as possible.”
While Oladokun is the sole songwriter and producer on the vast majority of the album's tracks, a few other songwriters appear in the liner notes – including Maren Morris (“No Country”), Brian Brown (“Hollywood”), Edwin Bocage and Theresa Terry (“Strong Ones”). As he puts it, Observations It wouldn't have been possible if she hadn't made early connections with songwriters throughout her burgeoning career.
“This album is the fruit of so many lessons and people like Dan Wilson and Ian Fitchuk or Mike Elizando, or even the modern great songwriters like INK,” he says. “These were people who took the time to really let me in and say, 'Here's what's great about what you're doing and here's how we can elevate it.'
The songs where Oladokun is at her most raw see the singer calling out Nashville and the industrial system she says failed her. The “Letter” opens with the thought that, if she drowned in a river, the city would not weep for her, but rather “breathe sighs of relief.” penultimate track”I would miss the birdsHe sees Oladokun calling the town by its name, decrying its willful ignorance of her and people like her, while 'Proud Boys and their Women' continue to thrive.
In the year since she wrote those songs, Oladokun's feelings about Nashville have only calcified. “Put it in ink, Nashville should be ashamed of itself. I'll say it as long as I don't get shot. this city is so full of st,” she says, looking directly into her Zoom camera. “It's not even because Nazis can walk around freely — that's a problem, but Nazis are congregating in all the states. My real problem is people who want to do enough appear good, but he'll never lift a finger to really help.”
In the eight years she's lived in the country music capital of the world, Oladokun says she's watched firsthand as artists and executives praise the “progress” the city has made socially, while black queer artists like her continue to be ignored. “I'm the Ghost of Christmas f–king Past for this town. I am where I am in my career, rather than this city. Despite the total lack of support,” he says. “For all the f-king country girls in glitter shorts dancing with drag queens, how many of them have offered me features or responded to one of my f-king DMs?”
As she continues, Oladokun catches herself and makes her point clear. “I want to separate the part of it that might feel personal, the part where it's just, 'Oh, people aren't paying attention or being fair to me,'” she explains, addressing Nashville directly. “I'm not the only black and gay talent in your town. I'm one of a huge, growing faction of artists in your backyard that you don't support because you know how much it will cost you.”
Her desire to take a breath and zoom out also happens during Observations. In the stirring hymn of the soul”no countryOladokun examines the various genocides happening around the world — in an Instagram post, the singer named Palestine, Congo, Sudan and Nigeria as direct inspirations — and yearns for a moral imperative to protect people from harm of our increasingly fragmented world.
In an album that deals so much with her personal struggles, Oladokun felt it was important to put her grievances in a larger context. “My work is not that important. Like, my job is hard — but everybody's job is hard,” he says. “It's important for me to remember, because as a person I never want to let this job stop me from being the best version of myself. I can't let my vision of what my everyday life is like distract from what I believe is the purpose of sharing my music, which is to give people something to listen to in a strange world.”
This is also, in part, why Oladokun never tries to offer big answers to the problems he presents Observations. Not only does it not have all the answers, it points out that we all need to agree on what the problems are before we can talk about solutions. “It's so important to name things, and I think a lot of the problems we have as a society come from our refusal to name things,” he says. “The goal of this record was never to give an answer, but to say, 'Oh. This hurts.”
When Oladokun started writing Observations from a crowded roomhe was considering leaving the music business altogether. When asked where she stands with that internal conversation today, she shrugs. “My relationship with my work right now … has a kind of agnostic quality to it,” he explains. “I think my career has a future, but so rarely is it demonstrated in front of me what it's like for someone like me to do it. That's the beginning of a conversation — I say, “So it was.” And it's a little bit up to others to say, “That it is how is it”. I can't be the only one trying to change the culture.”
A wry smile appears on her face, “Ask me again in a year.”
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/culture/pride/joy-oladokun-observations-from-a-crowded-room-nashville-1235804669/
