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Joy Crookes

1 festival played

South London songwriter of Bangladeshi-Irish heritage whose debut 'Skin' set sharp, sometimes uncomfortable self-portraits against lush retro-soul arrangements.

Joy Crookes was born in 1998 and raised in south London, the daughter of a Bangladeshi mother and an Irish father — a background that recurs throughout her writing. She released a run of EPs in the late 2010s before her debut album, Skin, appeared in 2021.

Her music draws on classic soul and R&B, with string and horn arrangements, live rhythm sections and a full, slightly husky voice at the centre. The songs move between personal reckoning and observation of the city around her, and she is often grouped with a wider circle of London singer-songwriters working in a similarly retro-informed idiom.

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