Eras, genres, places? Everything doesn’t matter. On her new album “Willpower” singer Joy Denalane collapses the space-time of pop. Wonderful.
If you want to anticipate the conclusion of Joy Denalane’s new album on a purely emotional level, then “Willpower” (Sony) is the last chance to take the ambiguous high of a far too long summer into a probably dark autumn. The Berlin singer’s confidence and happiness over a stretch of eleven pieces is as immediate as it is infectious. The older ones will be reminded of Oleta Adams and Randy Crawford, the younger ones of Lizzo and Taylor Swift. You can’t learn that and you certainly can’t produce it. This includes this feeling of happiness in the larynx that spreads to those listening because we are herd animals that still react to such key stimuli. Not everyone can. The fact that there is always a little melancholy in it, because the world is not so tralala and certainly not at the moment, gives such music its depth.