A Q&A with Joy Oladokun

For years, I've loved Joy Oladokun's work. Her latest album, 'OBSERVATIONS FROM A CROWDED ROOM,' came out October 2024 and was one of my favorite records released last year. Last month, I had the chance to sit down and chat with Oladokun about her work, performance, what's next, and so much more. 

Her work, which blends everything from folk to pop, rock, and R&B, is focused on connection and the universality of music. "Being black and queer on planet earth is lonely," Oladokun said. "It's even one of the things I said on my last album. If I stopped making music tomorrow, I would be okay with it because I've seen corners of the world and a sense of community that I didn't think I would ever see. And so that's the goal for me—let's create something that feels universal." 

You can read a selection of some of my favorite questions from our conversation in the written Q&A below, and you can check out the full recorded podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q: How long have you been writing and making music? 

A: My entire life, basically. When I was a kid, even before I learned how to play the guitar, there was this sort of inclination to use music or poems or lyrics as a way to express my feelings. Then one Christmas, when I was 10, my parents bought me a guitar, and I just ran with it. I think that, as a human, songwriting has taught me so much about how to express myself in my day-to-day life.

Q: From the beginning did you know that you wanted to do this as a career? 

A: Well, my family is from Nigeria, West Africa. I'm a child of immigrants. So no, I didn't say, "I'm going to do music for a career," because my parents were like, "You were born to be a doctor." Because my parents work in medicine. 

Growing up, I had a conflict similar to Troy from 'High School Musical.' I needed to focus on academics, and knowing what I know about myself now, I think I just wanted to sort of smoke weed and write words that rhyme. I think I had glimpses of how cool it would be to do this, but I never let myself fully dive in.

Q: How has your music style, your writing style, or how you approach your music changed over the past decade?

A: I feel mostly similar to that kid who started writing music to express themselves. Although the environments change, I think for me the purity is just wanting to make something that's honest and that helps people navigate their lives, like a lot of my favorite music and artists have that, and that remains the same.

Q: Is there a specific project that you're especially proud of that you've put out?

A: From a collaboration standpoint, I'm proud of the collaborations across all of my records. Obviously, I'm working on new music, so I'm thinking about who I'm going to invite in. And every record I have collaborations on is very intentional and specific, and it spans a lot of different genres because my musical taste spans a lot of different genres. The last record I put out, 'OBSERVATIONS FROM A CROWDED ROOM,' touches on things I faced as a queer black artist that I've always wanted to express. I chose people I felt would also represent the message of the record, like Maren Morris, Brian Brown, and The Kentucky Gentleman. And so I am really proud of that. 

Q: What does queerness in your work mean to you personally? 

A: Queerness in my work shows up in unexpected places. Obviously, there's the fact that I write about relationships and love, and I don't hide from what that's about or who that's about. But there's another queer aspect of my work that I don't think people always think about. Every song, every production, everything starts with me thinking about, if Nina Simone or Bob Marley or Bill Withers didn't have to deal with the things that they had to deal with when they were making music, what would they make and how would they release it? And I think that it's not obviously queer in the sense of I'm not at a Sylvester tribute concert, or there are not these obvious references to queer and black, and all this music of the past. But I think that people are able to find pieces of themselves and their culture in the sonics as much as they are in the lyrics, and that's always been a big goal of mine. There are little gospel bits that are inspired by me listening to Sylvester or being at drag shows, and there is a guitar tone that is messed up and crunched beyond belief because I want to make Jimi Hendrix proud. I think that there's sort of a desire to bring queer and black and non-binary heroes in the music of the past with me into the future. And I think that's a queer aspect of my art that I really like to celebrate and hold in front of me all the time.

Q: Where do you draw inspiration for your work? 

A: Nature is a huge thing for me. Even something as simple as starting my days on the back porch with coffee and watching birds. I think that there's this Woody Guthrie quote that says, "You can only write what you see." And nature is a big part of what I need to take in to be able to create; it's a huge influence on me. Even on my last record, there are a bunch of field recordings of birds from the places where the songs were written. At the beginning of the record, the birds are from this river in Oregon, where I wrote the first song. And then at the end, there's another song about birds, where it's about Nashville and all those bird sounds and things are pulled from birds that I recorded in my backyard. I nerd out about stuff like that. It's stuff people don't hear or maybe notice, but for me, it's sort of like this handmade quality to my work. 

Q: Are there any songs you especially enjoy performing live? 

A: There's a song called 'Sweet Symphony' that I wrote. My goal was to write a love song that my dad could sing to my mom. My dad used to come home from work and sing these Motown songs or early 90s R&B. 'Sweet Symphony' for me started because I thought, "I'm bored and I want to write a song that my dad would  sing to my mom." And so every time I play that song, it's like bringing a bit of my life and my family and my background to the stage and to the music. I think it's exciting that people get excited to hear it. There's something about it that feels like this is the type of music I've always wanted to make that feels sort of like it doesn't have a time or a place that you can put it. It's always going to mean something, and it can soundtrack people's lives.

Q: Is there anything new or exciting on the horizon for you? 

A: I went to the Stevie Wonder school of putting out as many records as you possibly can while you have the inspiration. So no one will ever have to wait four or five years for the next record for me. There's a huge chance that it could come at any moment. For the past few months, I've pulled back and put everything into planning what's next in terms of the music, and I'm really excited because I think it's coming together the way that I want it to. It's sort of like the slap countdown from 'How I Met Your Mother.' You can consider this the beginning of the slap countdown. Technically, there is another Joy Oladokun album that is basically finished, and it could come out right now, it could come out anytime, at any moment.