Observations From a Crowded Room, Joy Oladokun, EMI, 2024
Small Changes, Michael Kiwanuka, Polydor, 2024
Joy Oladokun and Michael Kiwanuka have both released special albums that reflect their personal situations and states of mind but they are on very different trajectories as these albums make clear.
Kiwanuka is currently the more settled of the two, despite a past history of anxiety and struggles with self-confidence. He has explained that: “My songs are always self-help messages, but I’m focusing on acceptance. Where Kiwanuka [his third album] was about self-acceptance, this one’s more like committing to what the situation is and who you are. Once you’ve accepted who you are, you can commit to it. So that means even when it feels tough, you don’t change like the wind.”
Kiwanuka became a father of two children in the period between Kiwanuka and Small Changes and those experiences have informed the music, which has become more intuitive and intimate as a result. As he was writing Small Changes “I remembered what got me hooked, what persuaded me to sing”: “when the melody began to appear over the chords in the chorus of Small Changes, suddenly I was back in my 20’s in my bedroom at my Mum and Dad’s hearing for the first time songs like Buffalo Springfield ‘Expecting To Fly’, or Arthur Lee’s ‘Everybody’s Gotta Live, or Cat Stevens’ ‘Trouble’ off of Mona Bone Jakon.” Those kinds of songs and melodies moved him so much he knew then what he wanted to try and do with his working life – “what really matters to me is the song writing, the music, and then the sharing it all with you.”
As a result, he is in the opposite place to Oladokun, who says: “I think a lot of my music comes from a place of knowing that not all Black queer people got to live this long or get this far. It feels like I’m fighting with both the idea of progress, the reality of progress and the cost of it.”
Observations From a Crowded Room was crafted during a period of introspection and questioning which saw Oladokun wrestling with her place in the music industry and the world at large. She has said that the album became a way “to write things, feel things, process things.” It “started out as, ‘I quit,’” and “ended up as a fresh start.” A 15-track collection—comprised of 12 songs and 3 interludes— the album blends her pop-folk roots with electronic and psychedelic elements and, being solely written and produced by Oladokun, reflects her growth as both artist and producer.
Kiwanuka sings that ‘Small changes / Solve the problems’. He encourages us to ‘Follow … dreams’, ‘Follow … hope’ and says that he has ‘followed love all the way’. He falls ‘on my knees to the sky for a sign’ and prays ‘Lead me to the light’. He sings to his love, ‘Stay by my side / There’s nothin’ that I would leave you for’.
He’s said that he has now developed: “the confidence to be me. To be a Black British Ugandan playing an electric guitar or an acoustic guitar, playing some indie songs, but then also playing some soul, 70s-inspired songs, Pink Floyd-inspired songs, doing long songs, doing songs that talk about being Black, or that talk about love or faith … there’s no boundary. But, you know, that took a long time.” Within this personal mix: “Having a faith in things now is, I think, a lot more acceptable, whatever faith it is. There’s no dogma, necessarily. We’re connected by the struggles we have and I think that’s what I’m singing about – being a human being and trying to overcome, which is what we’re all doing in a way.”
By contrast Oladokun, thinking of her home in Nashville, opens with the thought ‘that if I got lost / And drowned out in the river / No one in this town would cry’ and continues with ‘the Proud Boys and their women just make me feel out of place’ before asking ‘Where is the safe place for someone like me?’ Her claim is ‘I have struggled all my life / I’m fucking tired of heavy living’ ‘And my job is hard, but my friends don’t care / And my mind is dark ’cause things don’t seem fair’. She asks ‘am I the only one?’ but notes ‘He’s never left me lonely’, going on to state: ‘I’m a sceptic who still prays / If death leads me to Heaven, they’ll recognize my face / ‘Cause though it hurts me to believe, it kills me not to / And I am trying to find my way through the middle / And I am desperate to receive every good thing / From now until eternity, from dust until divinity’. She concludes: ‘Nothing is certain, everything changes / We’re spirit and bone marching to the grave / There are no answers, there arе only / Questions, chaos, and faith’.
Whether you are struggling or content, seeking peace or living the questions, both these artists have much to share that is compelling and challenging because both are vulnerably open about where they are, what they experience and what they believe. Both mesh that honesty to music that is hook-laden and stirring in its quality whether mellow or anguished in the emotive beat of its heart.
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Jonathan Evens
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