19th Floor by Joy Crookes Song Info
The spoken bit at the beginning is me saying goodbye to my grandma on the 19th floor of her building in London. This is what I do every time I say goodbye to her, and she always gives me that beautiful ‘Okay, I love you’. The strings were recorded in Abbey Road in Studio Two, which is The Beatles’ room and is also where Massive Attack recorded ‘Unfinished Sympathy’. And the song is about how far my family’s come to give me the life that I have. It’s a song about belonging – but it touches on so many subjects. It’s a comment on immigrants, it’s a comment on gentrification, and it’s a metaphor for all the things my grandma and my mum had to go through to give me the life that I have getting this opportunity to be a musician. And I think that that’s a universal story for a lot of immigrants in this country.
