One of soul music’s most vital voices, Joy Denalane announces her sixth studio album. WILLPOWER will be released 6th October 2023 via Four Music/Sony Music Entertainment, a selection of liberation anthems exploring life’s central moments: death, birth, endings and beginnings, a record about finding freedom and self-empowerment in letting go. Pre-order the album here.

A prominent figure on Germany's soul music scene for the past 20 years, Joy unveils the announcement with the project’s first single, ‘Hideaway’, a captivating soul ballad, harmonically mellow and sonically uplifting, disco-tinged with twinkling synth arpeggios and joyous with elegant choir moments.

The words are addressed to Max Herre, who Joy sang with on the 1999 Freundeskreis song ‘Mit Dir’. 24 years, two children and one separation and reconciliation later, Joy tells her unique and personal love story on ‘Hideaway’, where a second-life and newly discovered freedom together arrived after their two children had fled the nest.

"We remain parents, of course, and we continue to accompany the children," says Joy, "but I became a mother at the very beginning of my career. For as long as I can remember, family has been the defining core feeling for me. Of course I've developed as an artist and done my thing during that time, but it's still very different now.”

The accompanying music video, shot in Comporta, Portugal, is a cinematic visual of muted hues, Joy and her partner living a peaceful life among wondrous nature and architecture. Stylistically, each frame could be a still from a Wes Anderson film, artistically captured by director Henrik Alm.

Forthcoming album WILLPOWER continues on the theme of goodbyes and new beginnings. While working on the record, Joy experienced the loss of her beloved father, the grief of which eventually took her into a place of acceptance that a completely new phase of life was now to begin. Joy’s willpower was found in the ability to take things as they were and to live with them, to find one's place in the raging sea of life, but also to stand up for oneself.