{"id":36489,"date":"2025-09-22T14:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T14:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/36489\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T14:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T14:03:09","slug":"england-has-a-way-of-screwing-people-over-constantly-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/36489\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018England has a way of screwing people over constantly\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

There were moments during the making of her second album<\/a> when Joy Crookes<\/a> wondered if it was worth all the pain and strife. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis was an absolute f**king nightmare,\u201d the Mercury<\/a>-nominated singer and songwriter says. \u201cIronically, the album was written quite fast. So it wasn\u2019t the writing; I was concerned that it would be the writing that would be the difficult part, because of the stereotype of the second album. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut the real difficulty was the production and the amount of life that hit me during the time of making this record. So although I didn\u2019t want to believe the cliche, it happened in its own way to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Crookes talks about \u201clife hitting her\u201d, she\u2019s referring to a series of traumas that left her reeling. There are dark hints of these troubles on the new long-player, Juniper: its songs House with a Pool and I Know You\u2019d Kill chronicle an abusive relationship; Somebody to You is about a falling-out with a family member (\u201cYou\u2019re in every photo on my teenage bedroom wall \/ Though you\u2019re not even famous, I\u2019m your biggest fan of all\u201d).<\/p>\n

These would be daunting challenges for anyone. Crookes was also under pressure to replicate the success of her debut album, Skin, a collection of soulful bangers, from 2021, that drew comparisons to another Londoner with a smoky croon, Amy Winehouse, and was nominated for the Mercury Prize.<\/p>\n

Without Crookes ever setting out to become famous, Skin made her a star. The problem was that she wasn\u2019t feeling very starry. Even as she tried to strategise the next chapter of her career, life was hitting her like a ton of bricks. It got dark, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cArtists tend to struggle. We have mental-health problems.\u201d She had become, she says, \u201ca non-working\u201d person, dysfunctional and not sure where to turn. Before she could continue with her career, there were things she needed to put right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a very real-life experience. Although I am an artist, I am also a human being. There were a lot of things that, as a non-working person and just a human at the time, I had to address and which would be actually quite destructive and consequential for my artistry if I didn\u2019t take the time that I needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a reason, she says, why artists are often taken before their time. She is mindful that she is about to turn 27 \u2013 a notorious milestone in music, as the age at which Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones and others died.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many artists die so young in all mediums of art,\u201d Crookes says. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to make that catastrophic. That is just factual. That is what happens. I\u2019m fortunate enough to have a team of people around me \u2013 very importantly, my manager. She was not interested in me becoming an artist that suffered on stage and was struggling very openly. I could do that in private. That\u2019s how it should be. We have the phenomenon of the \u201927 club\u2019. I\u2019m going to be 27 in a few months\u2019 time. My life, or lack thereof, could look very different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crookes is friendly and no-nonsense. Her father is from Cabra, in Dublin, and she talks with warmth about the many summers she spent in Ireland. She notes that Blanchardstown shopping centre \u2013 \u201cBlanch\u201d being a part of the city with which she is intimately familiar \u2013 features on the cover of CMAT\u2019s new album<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was wondering the other day if I got my ears pierced in Blanchardstown. It was either Henry Street or Blanchardstown shopping centre. I got them pierced in Dublin for sure. I\u2019ve spent lots and lots of time in Dublin,\u201d she says. \u201cWe would go to Castleknock or Blanchardstown. Even as a teen, or my early 20s, I was in the shopping centre, going to Nando\u2019s \u2013 I got a Nando\u2019s black card \u2013 and loving it.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0CMAT: Euro-Country review \u2013 Dunboyne Diana\u2019s new album delivers joy and sadness in the same heartbeatOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Crookes\u2019 father moved to Britain to study engineering. It was there he met Crookes\u2019 mother, who grew up in Dhaka, and whose own mother fought in the Bangladesh Liberation War, against Pakistan, and received death threats for teaching women how to ride motorbikes. Her parents separated when she was young, and she grew up between two households in Elephant and Castle, in south London.<\/p>\n

Bangladesh and Ireland are obviously very different countries, but they are united, she says, by a shared colonial history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe denominator of being colonised by Britain \u2013 if more Irish people knew about Bangladesh, they would have more of an affinity specifically with Bangladesh than they would India. Obviously, being from both, and my parents being born and raised in their respective countries, I\u2019m a first-gen Bangladeshi-Irish person. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many more similarities than people realise. Bangladesh is a product of decolonisation and wouldn\u2019t exist had it not been for Britain\u2019s participation and involvement and f**keries in India. And Ireland\u2019s history is 800 years long with British colonisation. So there\u2019s so much similarity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Bangladesh, the liberation war that we had was a mother-tongue war,\u201d Crookes says, referring to the fact that Pakistan had tried to force East Pakistan, as Bangladesh was then called, to adopt Urdu in place of its native Bengali. \u201cAnd the erasure of the Irish language, there\u2019s so many similarities. They were using the same tricks on both people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GlastonburyGlastonbury 2025: Joy Crookes in the dress designed by Jawara Alleyne. Photograph: Jim Dyson\/Redferns <\/p>\n

It is because of that heritage that Crookes has been so outspoken about Gaza. At Glastonbury this year she wore a dress by the designer Jawara Alleyne that was styled to resemble a Palestinian flag. In an interview with the BBC at the festival, she also urged viewers to boycott Rod Stewart\u2019s headline set after the singer suggested British voters should \u201cgive Nigel Farage a chance\u201d as British prime minister.<\/p>\n

There has long been a political streak to her art. One of the most striking songs on Skin is Kingdom, an elegy for what the UK has become under successive Conservative governments, suffering the effects both of austerity and of Brexit. She was full of hope when Keir Starmer and Labour replaced the Tories, but that optimism has turned to disillusionment.<\/p>\n

\u201cEngland has a way of f**king people over constantly,\u201d Crookes says. \u201cIf you follow politics, it\u2019s not that shocking. I think the sad part is there was a glimmer of hope when Labour were voted in, because obviously, like, 15 years plus of Tory austerity \u2026 You could feel it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen [the Conservatives] were re-elected was when I wrote Kingdom. You could feel the anger and the frustration in London even when you were walking down the street. People were so f**ked off about that as an outcome. It felt so, so much that it didn\u2019t reflect how London truly felt. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat frustration, I think, will always be there until a very big change happens here in the UK. But it\u2019s also not surprising, because they are all themes \u2013 and, for lack of a better word, f**keries \u2013 that the British government have explored since beyond our time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crookes is happy to be a symbol of a multiracial Britain but does not wish to be defined by it. When Skin came out she was struck by the way the British media constantly defined her by her ethnicity, as though she were a metaphor for melting-pot London rather than an actual person.<\/p>\n

\u201cI often was referred to as \u2018Bangladeshi-Irish south London Joy Crookes\u2019. When I would hang out with my mates, if I was tired, I would say, \u2018I\u2019m a tired Bangladeshi-Irish south Londoner.\u2019 And they\u2019d be, like, \u2018What the f**k are you saying?\u2019 I was referred to as that for so long that I ended up calling myself \u2018Bangladeshi-Irish south London Joy Crookes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Her father introduced her to all sorts of music, from the lovelorn indie of Mazzy Star to the rumbling reggae of King Tubby. He also passed on to her his fandom of Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad would buy me books on her, saying \u2018I think you\u2019ll relate to her.\u2019 Her dad was also a structural engineer. There were those strange little similarities. She is Ireland\u2019s princess. I felt a huge affinity with her and her voice and, more importantly, how she always, always lived to use her voice. <\/p>\n

\u201cI read Rememberings\u201d \u2013 O\u2019Connor\u2019s memoir \u2013 \u201cslightly over a year ago, and that was a very difficult read. And I think, if I\u2019m totally honest, I got to a position in music where I felt I had the opportunity to meet her. So when she passed I, selfishly, was so sad I never got to meet her. I think she even died in south London \u2013 she died not 10 minutes away from me. I\u2019ve always seen her as like a musical godmother, a guardian angel. I wish I could tell her that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She sees O\u2019Connor as belonging to the same category of artist as Winehouse: women who were built up and torn down and whose public undoing was regarded as a spectator sport. \u201cThere was a huge amount of guilt that people felt. They ridiculed her whole life and treated her like s**t. Similar to Amy, the general public felt there was a green card to mock her and people like Amy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crookes is proud of Juniper and grateful to have come through all the ups and downs. (She is now in a relationship with Moya Garrison-Msingwana, a Toronto-born illustrator.) She sees the album as ultimately representing hope and renewal \u2013 its title is a reference to the \u201cresilient\u201d juniper tree, which can grow anywhere.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s more than ready to leave the dark clouds behind and continue moving forward. \u201cI feel good,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like, \u2018Jesus, will it just come on?\u2019 The album has been done for a long time. I feel restless, if I\u2019m really honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Juniper is released via Insanity Records\/Sony Music<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were moments during the making of her second album when Joy Crookes wondered if it was worth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[17829,8179,893,93,61,60,28226,28227,18097],"class_list":{"0":"post-36489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-amy-winehouse","9":"tag-bangladesh","10":"tag-cmat","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-joy-crookes","15":"tag-rod-stewart","16":"tag-sinead-oconnor"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}