Joy Crookes: an old grudge, a new verse
Her first new music since Juniper, with Denzel Curry taking a verse on a relationship she has been done with for years.
BY JOLT Staff · SEP 19 2026 · 1 min readJoy Crookes wrote 'Painkiller' years before she released it. Her first new music since Juniper hands the last word to Denzel Curry, and the two of them settle an old score in public.
Crookes is South London, Elephant and Castle, daughter of a Bangladeshi mother and an Irish father. Skin, her 2021 debut, reached the UK top five and took a Mercury nomination. Juniper followed in September 2025, and since then the only release has been a rework of 'Feet Don't Fail Me Now' with Ravyn Lenae.
“I wrote Painkiller years ago after the end of a destructive relationship. It's a conversational tune where I go through the motions of why I dated such a gobshite. alas, at least I got a nice tune out of it.”
'Painkiller' comes out on RCA as a standalone single. The video, directed by Ethan and Tom, was shot over two days in Chicago while Crookes was opening for Lewis Capaldi on his US tour. She calls it 'a conversational tune where I go through the motions of why I dated such a gobshite'.
It runs four minutes, and the neo-soul production leaves room for the voice. Crookes sings low and smoky, working the arc: the loved-up opening, the fights, the drunken nights. Two thirds of the way through, Denzel Curry takes over, sliding into the beat instead of landing on top of it, and the song turns into an argument.
For anyone who has stayed with Crookes since Skin, it sits easily beside the catalogue. It suits a walk home more than a party.
The reservation is the arrangement, which stays inside a familiar neo-soul palette and never argues back. Crookes carries more weight than the track does underneath her, and Curry's verse is the only jolt in it.
A leftover worth keeping, and better use of four minutes than a relaunch would have been. Three and a half.
