feature image photo by Lexander Bryant

“I got back from South Africa like a few days ago and I’m still jet lagged, but I finally feel like I’m not hallucinating anymore,” Joy Oladokun tells me. We’re talking via Zoom on a Thursday; the late morning sun shining behind Oladokun as she sits in her living room in Nashville.

They were in South Africa to perform two shows for the “Rocking the Daisies” festival in Cape Town. Even though the festival was only two days, they spent nine days touring the country, splitting their time between Cape Town and Johannesburg, where they got to tour Nelson Mandela’s house. “It was good to marry my understanding of what it’s like to spend time in Africa with South Africa’s history,” they said, sharing with me that they had only spent time in Nigeria previously, since that’s where their family is from.

But now, Oladokun is in “Music City” as they prepare to release their latest album Observations From a Crowded Room. The album was largely performed, written and produced by Oladokun herself. And I had to know the choice behind that. Was it economical? Artistic? Existential? For them, it was all of the above. “Being in the music industry is so strange because people are so eager to spend your money all the time,” she says. We joke about the fact that when you’re signed to a record label, you’re given an advance — money the label loans you that is then expected to be paid back over time.

photo by Rachel Deeb

“There is this economic responsibility that I’m given when I signed to a label which I was aware of,” they say. “I think that the natural course of things, the next step is ‘let’s add to that loan number by hiring the most expensive producers and using the most expensive gear and making expensive music videos in an age where people don’t even watch music videos.”

She shares that the economical aspect wasn’t so much about “not recouping” the amount invested or being worried about their future financially. “It was economical in the sense that when they signed me, I was making music by myself in the attic of this house. And that’s the music that they like,” she explains. “So why would we not just do that again with a little more budget?”

When you listen to Observations From a Crowded Room, you will not miss the slick production of a mega producer like a Jack Antonoff (who Oladokun teamed up with earlier this year for the song “I Wished On The Moon.”) The album being a largely self-contained project gives it an intimate quality that isn’t replicable when you have a lot of hands in the pot. What you get is a raw, unflinchingly honest account of what it is to be a Black, queer artist in a world and an industry that is rife with both micro and macro aggressions.

Oladokun wrote the album’s first track “Letters From a Blackbird” while they were on mushrooms “on the last day of a tour that I had a really hard time being on.” They were “emotionally going through this thing where as a marginalized artist, as a Black queer artist that people made a lot of promises to, I feel so alone and so unsupported.”

“I just felt as an artist, if I perpetuate this system of working with another white guy that makes Black music and filtering my pain and my feelings and my frustrations through that, the messaging is going to get lost. And I also might get lost within that.”

“Letters From a Blackbird” is a striking way to open the album, drawing you into the emotional territory you’re going to navigate for the next 14 tracks. Ahead of the album’s release, there were four singles. The lead single, “I’d Miss the Birds,” is a melodic and melancholy rumination on what a life outside of Nashville could possibly look like. “The Proud Boys and their women make me feel out of place,” she sings along with an acoustic guitar. Despite the fact that Nashville is 30% Black, its mainstream culture is overwhelmingly white.

photo by Rachel Deeb

The track “Drugs” contains a line that really sticks out: “I’m just over trying to smoke away the rage,” a sentiment that echoes in the other singles “No Country” and “Questions, Chaos & Faith.” Since announcing this album, Oladokun has been incredibly candid about the ways her experiences as a Black woman in a white dominated industry have caused her to have a bit of a mental breakdown. In the album’s “Observation,” they quote James Baldwin where he talked about the things that progress has stolen from him. It was a quote that felt particularly resonant due to the season of life she was in.

“Being a Black woman, a queer artist in this moment; it cost me my time. It cost me my hair, moments with family. It took from me and people wanted me to keep going without acknowledging or grieving what was lost.” She points out there has been such a rush to return to life before lockdown, to pretend that 2020 didn’t exist, and she found herself doing that. But with this record, it was a way to give testament to where they’re really at. “As fun as it would be to hang out with Jack Antonoff in a basement somewhere and make music, it felt important for me to throw a wrench in the star-maker machine and be like, ‘what is the honest experience of this person that you’re trying to sell to everybody?’”

With that knowledge, it feels unsurprising that despite being a largely solitary experience, the album is called Observations From a Crowded Room. After touring extensively for the past two years (they’re not even done yet; they will be touring Australia and New Zealand for most of November with Hozier before kicking off their own “The Blackbird Tour” in 2025), things felt different for the self-professed introvert.

“When I reflect, when I regain energy, all of that happens alone,” they admit. “I think that part of me doing this record alone was — I genuinely actually need to be alone, whether you understand that about me or not.”

But it wasn’t just her need to be alone that led to this choice. She has spent a lot of time being the only Black artist opening for a white artist, and wanted to be “honest about how that feels and how some of those people treated me, some of them friends, some of them colleagues, and some of them just random fans — the good and the bad.”

“The only way to do it, or to take all those observations was by stepping back, which feels a little contradictory, but all those experiences and those voices and the influences, were still in the room with me as I was making the record,” she says.

We joked that Oladokun was “collecting cool white men like infinity stones,” including the aforementioned Antonoff and Hozier, as well as Chris Stapleton and John Mayer. But still, she carries her identities onto the stage. “Just because Hozier invites me to his tour doesn’t mean that the people that work for Hozier or that Hozier’s fans, or the security at the venue, care,” they point out. “It’s my responsibility to show up, but it’s not my fault if your security guard, while I’m carrying a guitar about to open an arena, asks me what I’m doing here.”

“John Mayer did such an incredible job of saying to his fans, to his crew, to everyone around him, like, this is a person that I chose to be here and respect their time,” Oladokun adds.

photo by Brian Higbee

“We live in an age where white men are trying to absolve their sins by having a Black or a queer artist that they’re close to,” Oladokun says. “Bonus points if it’s both,” they add. (Amen to that). “I’ve been marked over this past year by my desperate refusal to be that person for people.” They point out that because of the melodic nature of their music and “how high pitched” their voice is, people think they will go along with anything. But at the end of the day, their safety and mental health is paramount.

“I had these bum ass little white boys in Iowa shouting, ‘try that in a small town,’ while my band and I were playing during a festival,” they share. “It’s an interesting thing to be Black and queer, and people think that your invite is enough. And I think the conversation that I’m having is no, it’s also how you treat me when I get there.”

Talking to Oladokun was an absolute joy (no pun intended). Her level of candor was refreshing at a time when people might not want to say those quiet parts out loud. I had to ask her about the current moment queer women artists are having in the mainstream and how that moment seems to be…lacking something. After a fit of giggles on both our part, she was, again, refreshingly honest about being on the sidelines of that conversation, despite her songs being featured on Grey’s Anatomy.

“Not to take away from the success of other queer artists in the mainstream, but I’m a Black, queer, masc presenting, folk pop star,” they say. “If those identities are too at the forefront of any choice I make, all I’m going to get is backlash. People aren’t going to hear anything that I have to say. If I was six percent less confident, I would feel like my work doesn’t matter.” And they have an impressive list of accomplishments that should be acknowledged, like being in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

“I don’t think I’m a perfect person. I don’t think I’m the prototype for a Black, queer masc presenting person that should be elevated to the forefront. But I also recognize when I’m being ignored in a way that doesn’t feel consistent with what I’ve accomplished.”

Observations From a Crowded Room is out now.

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