Serenity, love, safety, joy, and above all peace, is what Joeboy’s “Somewhere Between Beauty and Magic” is all about.
With no features, Joeboy has run solo on his debut album with rhythms of love, and celebration. Since his first major hit with “Baby”, Joeboy has done an outstanding job by constantly breaking the norms and outdoing himself.
On his debut album, Joeboy manipulates exotic and captivating rhythms to produce orgasmic feelings to the ear of the listener. While listening, the album triggers an experience of a world that is almost a facade but truly exists with Joeboy’s beauty lyrics leading the cruise.
A fascinating thing about the album is how it takes on social issues like love, self-worth, loneliness, drama, and life as a whole healthily and less dramatically. For instance, JoeBoy reminds himself of his self-worth on “Count On Me” as he reaffirms to himself who he is and the purpose of God for him. I feel this is an important factor for an artiste to include in his art as low self-esteem is an issue many youths struggle with today.
Another important reason why Joeboy deserves a lot of accolades for his debut album is how he tackled the issue of consent on one of the tracks. Consent is an important topic that I believe should be taught in schools, churches, and all other institutions of life as it plays an important role in a growing human. Joeboy has once again used his platform and talent to hammer the importance of consent in his music. This is a pattern I believe should be followed by other artistes as they have the power to influence and impact a lot of cultural and societal issues.
Last but not the least, I think it’s amazing and thoughtful how he closed the tracks on the album with “Celebration”. Kudos to him for that. This depicts how he wants to lead his life.
One thing that I am certain must have had an impact on an amazing album like this is the circle Joeboy keeps. Many artistes underestimate the power of circles. Going through the credits of the album, I realized that it is the same circle of producers and engineers who have worked with him since the era of “Baby” and “Love and Light” are the ones still present on the new album. For an artiste, intimacy, chemistry, and connectivity are key when working with producers and these are the factors evident in Joeboy’s “Somewhere Between Beauty and Magic”.
At the end of the album, Joeboy included a short documentary that explains his journey so far. The documentary opened with the words, “Heavy is the head that wears the crown” and he explained that he never understood the saying until recently. Well, after listening to “Somewhere Between Beauty and Magic”, I can confidently say that Joeboy wears the crown majestically.