South London singer Saint Joshua has caught the attention of listeners with his heartfelt lyrics and cinematic sound. Racking up over 7 million streams with more than 275,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, Joshua has seen support from BBC radio and other outlets. He is also a recipient of the PPL Momentum Music Fund, run by PRS Foundation, which has enabled him to develop his live musical arrangements and write and release his latest work EP3 Live.
Focusing on love and its loss, EP3 Live explores the tumultuous end of a relationship and the struggle to accept things after it’s over.
‘I was single and not wanting to date, so I wrote around that,’ Joshua says. To get to the heart of the matter, he was inspired by the great British artists of his youth. Artists like Adele, Amy Winehouse and Craig David, known for silky love songs and heart-rending breakup anthems, were major influences.
‘It feels like homage to their artistry,’ he says.
Sometimes, it can be easier to explore sensitive subjects and express vulnerability through music, rather than speaking about them in the real world. It’s something that Joshua thinks was ‘one thousand percent’ the case when it came to EP3. ‘This is why I don’t share my music with people I know because it feels like an invasion of privacy,’ he says. ‘In all seriousness, I am able to listen back to my bodies of work and realise aspects about me that I had no knowledge of.’
‘Can you believe a listener of mine guessed my star sign solely based on my lyrics?’ he adds. ‘Crazy.’
Listeners clearly feel a connection with Saint Joshua, likely because of that vulnerability and the fact that his music creates space for connection and emotional reflection. ‘I’ve had the pleasure of receiving messages from so many listeners who have contacted to stay how much certain songs mean to them,’ Joshua says. ‘Before releasing music, I did not consider how important those messages were and how fuelling they are to keep going.’
Recent single Love Game encapsulates the aim of EP3, digging into the challenges of romantic relationships and the challenges they present. Crucially, Saint Joshua doesn’t let either party off the hook. Everybody plays their part in the game. ‘Much like the EP, it is a metaphor about dating. We often critique about how rubbish dating is when in fact we contribute to it the same. Not much of a love song is it?’ he says.
Saint Joshua has reached a turning point. It’s the culmination of three EPs worth of progress, but also hints at his career to come. Over the course of the releases, Saint Joshua has seen his work and career develop ‘in every way.’
‘Besides the visual and sonic progression, my confidence in my art has been the most important. I deliver everything with intention which makes decision making far easier than it once did when I had no clue about who I was as an artist. The trilogy shows different aspects of me captured in these EPs and it is a glimpse of the future full-length projects that I am excited to make.’
