While I enjoy interviewing artists for the second, third or fourth (sometimes more!) time, it’s always lovely to meet someone new and find out about their life in music. Emily Joy is a country-pop artist from Western Australia whom I knew had studied music extensively, but there’s only so much you can glean from research online – which is at least one of the reasons why it’s good to have these in-depth chats. In this interview, which was prompted by the release of her latest single ‘Give Me a Shot or Two’, Joy talks about how she played violin from the age of a seven and lasted a decade with it even though, as she said, she ‘made the violin cry’! But that early training stood her in great stead as she learnt to sing then picked up guitar. 

What followed was time studying at WAAPA (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts), Berklee College of Music and the Academy of Country Music in Tamworth. She released her first single, ‘Barricade’, in 2016 then a self-titled EP in 2016. 

A change in her circumstances – namely, the end of a relationship which also meant losing her guitarist and business partner – saw her taking a break from music and then, as she told me, feeling anxious about releasing music again. She kept writing, though, which means she has songs in the bank. And last year Joy released her first new music in eight years, the single ‘A Little Part of Me’.

This year she has returned with ‘Give Me a Shot or Two’, a song about taking a shot at love. And while the song can more than speak for itself, Joy has also undertaken some audacious activities in support of it, including playing at traffic lights in between them turning red and going green! So of course I had to ask her about that.

Joy is still young but she has the steadiness that comes from an artist who has spent time finding out who they are and what they want to convey. It was great to get to know her in this interview and I hope you enjoy it too.

Listen to Emily Joy on Apple Music

Listen to Emily Joy on Spotify

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