Joy Crookes

I still think about Amy Winehouse. It’s been years now, but I remember that particular kind of grief—when someone who’s been making exactly the right songs for you just disappears. That voice, soft but rough somehow, made sadness feel understood. Love Is a Losing Game, You Know I’m No Good—those songs burrowed into me when I was younger. They were necessary in a way only certain music is.

The loss never really left the British music world. But something came out of it: a generation of singers trying that same thing. Joy Crookes is one of them. South London, early twenties, soft pop that you could miss if you weren’t listening carefully. The songs have titles like Don’t Let Me Down—the kind of music that whispers instead of announces.

What gets me about her work is the backbone underneath the softness. There’s steel there. She talked about living alone since seventeen, learning to take care of herself, figuring out how to say no. That came from her family, especially the women in it. You hear that in the songs—not fragility, but resilience that doesn’t need to prove itself.

I can’t tell you if Joy Crookes will matter the way Amy did. That’s not really the point. But there’s something in her music—that quality of turning difficulty into something that doesn’t scream for attention. Maybe that’s its own kind of inheritance from what came before.