If you follow him on social media you’ll know that Joesef is a rare breed: a musician who has talent to burn but bags of personality, too. Media training? Not on the agenda. A recent TikTok video wryly proclaimed: “Hello, I’m Joesef. I sing songs and produce them and I’m Scottish and I like to romanticise really traumatic events in my life and monetise them by turning them into songs.”
The past few months have been somewhat surreal for the entertainingly droll 27-year-old. Heading up Spotify’s Glow initiative to amplify the work of LGBTQIA+ artists, he has appeared on the advertising boards of Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium and on a digital billboard in Times Square, in New York. Meanwhile, Elton John recently said that he was in love with both Joesef’s voice and his music.
“I’m trying to become desensitised to big things like that, but I dunno … I think it’s happening quite often now, and it’s like … God,” he says, momentarily lost for words. He tries again. “I think you just need to keep reminding yourself and giving yourself some perspective about what this stuff actually means because … it’s f**king crazy,” he says with a grin and a shrug. “It is really insane, but aye, it’s amazing, man. I’m just having the time of my life. It’s class.”
Joesef released his excellent debut album Permanent Damage in January, a beautifully pitched collection of alternative-soul songs about heartbreak, redemption and the measure of a person’s self-worth. Already an established star in his native Scotland, he is on a firm upward trajectory internationally, too. Yet growing up in Garthamlock, a suburb of Glasgow, he never saw life as a musician being on the cards despite his mum “blasting Al Green, The Mamas and the Papas, Marvin Gaye from the moment she got up til the time she went to bed”.
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“Garthamlock’s quite a deprived area and it was quite a rough place to grow up — so there was literally nothing to do, apart from just playing outside with f**king sticks and balls,” he says. “We had so much fun, and there was a big sense of community there, but I didn’t feel like the music industry — or any sort of creative industry — was accessible in any way. Even as a young kid, if you just briefly mentioned anything like that — cos I loved to paint and I loved to draw — everybody would always be, like, ‘There’s no money in that. What’s the point?’ There was always this glass ceiling where you could never step up or get past it, because of the financial burden of being a part of that world. But I think just growing up in that atmosphere, it added stuff to my character that now, doing this as a job, I find invaluable.”
Joesef went to music college for a year, after leaving school, but dropped out “because I’ve never really been good in a classroom setting”. But he did make some connections that would change his life: after Joesef sang California Dreaming at an open-mic night in a Glasgow bar “after drinking, like, nine pints”, a friend from the course realised his extraordinary potential and decided to become his manager.
Up to that point Joesef had worked in bars and been reasonably happy with his lot. Sort of.
“I worked in TGI Friday’s, which was f**king horrendous,” he says, laughing. “And then I worked in a heavy-metal bar right after it, when I was, like, 20. So I had a bit of an education. It was like two ends of the spectrum as far as bar work goes. In one I was like a clown making balloons for kids, and on the other I was dealing with moshers and old, Yoda-like men.
“I was kind of aimless, kind of unambitious, just because I didn’t really think much of myself. I didn’t have a five-year plan, I wasn’t at uni or anything like that. I was all right with being a bartender, but then, when the music things started to happen, I was, like, ‘Thank f**k! Thank God!’”
He began making music in his bedroom with his laptop and guitar, putting his songs online in 2019; they quickly gained traction, and he was soon playing sold-out venues like King Tut’s in Glasgow. The small matter of a pandemic scuppered his momentum.
“It was brutal, because I was just getting started with the whole touring thing and all that, cos I’d never really played live before,” he says. “And then when Covid happened it was a bit sh**e — but I was making tunes in my bedroom anyway, so it was kind of just business as usual for me. I think I managed to clear a lot of ground that a lot of artists were just stagnant in, because they couldn’t get to studios during Covid. So everything happens for a reason, and it gave me time to sit with myself and practise and get better with production. I always try to look for the silver lining.”
Joesef used the time to move to London and hone his production skills, writing what would eventually become Permanent Damage. By his own admission, he writes best when he is “hungover, or feeling like sh**e” — “less so than I used to, because I think it’s not very sustainable to be permanently drunk or hungover,” he says with a chuckle. “I dunno; I think when you’re hungover you’re kind of, like, raw to the world. You’re in a very vulnerable position, in your purest form, kind of thing. And I find that I can easily access parts of myself that I’m quite good at hiding when I’m feeling like I’m in the gutter.”
He pinpoints two songs on the album as key tracks. “I love Just Come Home with Me Tonight, because of the way it makes me feel when I sing it; it just takes me right back to when I wrote it,” he says of the song he wrote after meeting his ex-boyfriend at a party. “I just love the tone and production of it; it just suits the song so well. And I also love Didn’t Know How, which is kind of like the ‘f**k you!’ song on the album. Most of the songs are me on my knees, trying to make sense of things, but that song is the moment I get up and am, like, ‘D’you know what, man? I don’t really need this any more.’ I’ve never really wrote a ‘f**k you!’ song before, and the production is just instantly get up and dance, and I love that.”
Whatever Joesef is doing, it has worked. As well as a steadily growing fan base in North America, he has already attracted the attention of the aforementioned Elton John, who featured him on his Apple Music show, The Rocket Hour, last December.
“I don’t know how he got wind of me, but all of a sudden I’m sitting at my laptop and he just popped up, sitting there in his big Gucci trackie — and I’m there, genuinely just trying not to black out,” he says. “But it was amazing. He said some really nice things, and I felt really fortunate, because, really, he doesn’t need to do that. He’s Elton John — he doesn’t need to give me his time of day. See, the way I grew up, you never imagine you’re going to be in proximity to people like Elton John, never mind have a conversation with him. So it was a very out-of-body experience, but I’ll be telling my grandkids about that one, for sure.”
The rest of this year will be spent touring — he jokingly complains that he’s being “pure muled out on promo” by his label. Still, you get the feeling that Joesef is ready for the big time. “I mean, we’ll soon find out — unless I go catatonic and you don’t hear from me in six months,” he says, laughing. “Naw, I feel like I’m poised for action no matter what anyone throws at me. I’m good to go.”
Given everything that has happened over the past few years, there are a few things that he might tell the younger version of himself, growing up feeling pretty hopeless in Garthamlock. He sighs, nodding.
“I would just tell him that it’s going to be all right,” he says with a bittersweet smile. “I feel like I spent a lot of time as a kid not knowing what was going to happen to me, and I just felt like my life was going to be really bleak. So I think he would be f**king buzzing to know that he was going to be doing all of this.
“I went through a lot of hard stuff when I was younger, and I could never see the end of it. So I’d just like to tell him that it does end and it does get better, and you’re gonna be having the time of your life. You could not imagine the s**t you’re going to get up to,” he adds with a loud cackle. “Aye. He’d be pretty buzzing.”
Permanent Damage is released by Bold Cut/Awal. Joesef plays Opium, Dublin, on Saturday, March 11th
