Joy Oladokun has announced her anticipated new album, Observations From A Crowded Room. The follow-up to 2023’s Proof of Life will arrive less than 16 months later, on Oct. 18, 2024, via Amigo Records/Verve Forecast/Republic Records. Oladokun completely wrote and produced the new album, and she performed the majority of it alone. The tracklist includes 12 new songs and three spoken interludes.
“This album became a way for me to write things, feel things, process things,” Oladokun says. “Because, as the producer, I just had to sit with these songs for so long. It became really healing in a sense of, ‘I made this. I’m listening to an album that I genuinely love. All the sounds and bits and bobs came from me with the help of just an engineer.’ It was transformative. So, it started out as, ‘I quit,’ and it has ended up as a fresh start.”
Four songs from Observations From A Crowded Room have seen release so far. Earlier this year Oladokun shared the indie-folk ballad “QUESTIONS, CHAOS & FAITH” and the gospel-inflected “DRUGS.” Along with the album announcement, she has also revealed the soulful slow-burn rocker “NO COUNTRY” and the modern folk tune “I’D MISS THE BIRDS.”
Based in Nashville and hailing from Casa Grande, Arizona, Oladokun is the proudly Black and queer daughter of Nigerian immigrants. Her music spans a wide range of genres while drawing from the whole of her experience. She performed at the White House for the signing of the Respect For Marriage Act in 2022, and in 2023 her song “i see america” was a finalist for the Recording Academy’s Special Merit Award, Best Song for Social Change. She has collaborated with artists such as Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Jason Isbell, and Noah Kahan.
Order Joy Oladokun’s Observations from a Crowded Room now.
