Joy Oladokun talks to Joy Williams on Apple Music Country about her new album in defense of my own happiness, working with Maren Morris, and how hope plays a part in her craft. The full interview with Joy Oladokun is available on-demand here.
Joy Oladokun on what this time in her career feels like
“I feel in my career and life honestly, just that way you feel a little bit after a plane has taken off, like you’re not quite reached cruising altitude and your body is sort of adjusting to being… That’s how I feel about my life of career right now. But honestly I think that when I got into music, it really was I just wanted to make songs that helped me and helped the small network of people that were listening and to be in a space for it like, I don’t know, I was on the newspaper if you asked me. I got to play Fallon and little things are happening where I’m like, I’m sort of acclimating and hopefully that will only escalate. And so I’m just trying to, I don’t know, get ready for the ride.”
Joy Oladokun on writing “Bigger Man” with Maren Morris
Joy Oladokun on writing “Bigger Man” with Maren Morris
“It was really amazing to go into a room of really accomplished writers and have them treat your ideas as equal because that does not always happen. And so we were kicking ideas around the room and I had been meditating on the idea of being with the Bigger Man for a while. I just, I don’t know. I thought it was cool because I’m a lady, she’s a lady and we could write a song. It’s just so juvenile, it’s like, what if… And I just like, I don’t know. I think it’s an ancient feeling for people who have had to fight and work harder, who have to behave better than people who have had an easier time. It just like, it was so easy and powerful and I had a great time making it and I’m honored that she was willing to sing on it.”
Joy Oladokun on how she came up with the album title for in defense of my own happiness
Joy Oladokun on how she came up with the album title for in defense of my own happiness
“I think I experienced it as I was coming to terms with my queerness and just like I had to also convince myself that I am okay and that this is okay and that I will be okay and then I can be okay. And then there’s the external level of sometimes people have opinions. Even when you are happy and when you are healthy and when you are okay and it’s this tension of how do you let some of those opinions and narratives go? And how do you stand in your health and in your wholeness? And just say, “This is the life I’ve chosen, I back it, I stand behind it.”And the hope is that through me living this life authentically, just to blessing and love and peace of that ripple effect. I hope that there’s some little queer girl who plays folk songs in Arizona and watches too much Star Wars, she like sees me post pictures of me and my camper with my girlfriend. And she’s like, ‘Okay, I can do it. I can do it. I can exist.’”
“But I think that I didn’t grow up with a lot of role models that look like me or made music like me. And so I think the album, the cover, the whole… It was like ‘this is what it is.’ I’m defending these genres, my queerness, my spirituality, my humanity, everything.”
Joy Oladokun on how hope plays a role in her craft
“Sometimes hope is sort of looking at what you have around you and what you have in your hands and saying, ‘I can do something with this.’ It was the first time I had ever heard it put that way and I think it so accurately describes hope as it plays into my work. Because it’s not necessarily me saying, ‘Everything’s going to be okay someday’ or ‘as long as I get this feeling out onto paper, you’ll be fine.’ I think it’s more like, ‘I’m angry, I’m confused, I’m addicted, I want to be a friend.’ You take those feelings and you, I don’t know, you sort of say, ‘I can make something beautiful and holy and amazing out of this.” That’s hope as I see it in my work and as I hope it represents itself in my work.”
