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United States Joss Stone: 'I just want to be barefoot and pregnant'
In 2011 Joss put her money where her mouth was when she paid her record company millions of pounds to escape her contract. ‘I had this massive deal with EMI but I was so unhappy. People were telling me they wanted everything about me to be different. I realised the most important thing to me was my voice and nothing else. You can’t take that from me, and I don’t give a s*** about the rest.’
Joss attributes her determination to put her own needs first to her parents: Richard, who runs a fruit and nut business, and Wendy, who let holiday cottages and then became her manager. Joss says the (now divorced) couple always told their children, ‘“You do not have to do anything you don’t want to do.” I knew I had a responsibility: if you’re unhappy, it’s on you, because you have a choice.’
Since then Joss has lived life on her own terms. In 2014, without fanfare, she embarked on her Total World Tour, an attempt to sing in every country, including Syria, Iraq, Libya and even North Korea. ‘We were very much tourists in North Korea, being taken around by our tour guide. It was impossible to sing publicly, so all the guides met secretly, which was crazy and scary, in this hidden part of an old building.’ Joss had purchased a karaoke machine to plug in her microphone and keyboard, with which she performed for just half an hour, ‘because I didn’t want anyone to get in trouble.
‘Everyone’s so sweet. If you talk to them about the idea that North Korea is a horrible place, they’ll say, “What are you talking about?” We’re all indoctrinated in our own way – we like the way we live and they like the way they live. When you go outside [the capital] Pyongyang it may be different, but I’ll never know because I wasn’t allowed and neither are those guides, so they don’t know either.’
Having ticked off all but one of the 200-plus countries listed as ‘official’ by the UN, in 2019 she came a cropper at the final destination – Iran. After landing in Tehran, she and her small team (including her brother Harry, who acted as videographer) were detained overnight then deported. ‘They said I was blacklisted because women aren’t allowed to sing publicly in Iran. I’d been intending to sing privately, like I did in Saudi Arabia, but they said, “We don’t trust you.” It was scary.’ So she didn’t get to sing. ‘Well, I sang in the shower at the hotel as loud as I could!’
Yet the story had an unexpectedly romantic twist when, on leaving Iran, a shaken Joss phoned Cody, 31, a former US Marine. The pair had met a year previously at Belize airport where Joss – still on her world tour – was waiting for a connecting flight having just returned from playing in Antarctica. ‘We got talking and I thought, “God, this man is lovely.”’ At the time, she was in a relationship but the pair stayed in touch, ‘like penpals’, for a year. ‘When I was being deported, I just suddenly thought of him and called and said, “I’m so gutted, can you be my silver lining?” He flew to Barcelona, I met him there and we’ve been together ever since.’
Before this, Joss was getting so worried she might never have babies, she was on the verge of having her eggs frozen. ‘It’s a great idea, if you have terrible taste in men – like I had. I never did it, though, because I read you can get really sick with the treatments and I’d have had to take too long out of work.’
By the time she met Cody, Joss knew what she wanted from a partner. ‘I’ve had a lot of relationships,’ she says, pulling a face. ‘But I’ve learnt from each one.’ Her main lesson was honesty. ‘I told Cody, “I have a fairy-tale complex and people tell me that’s a bad thing as no one can live up to it. But I would like to keep my complex, and it’s up to you to nurture it,”’ she chortles. ‘When you lay it out like that, some people might run away, but Cody makes life like a fairy tale all the time.’
The pair plan to marry soon now Covid rules allow for their families to get together. One of the boons in their early relationship was Cody had never heard of Joss. ‘It helped because people can have a preconceived notion of me as lovely and sweet – more lovely and sweet than I actually am,’ she laughs. I don’t believe that for a moment. She seems content, settled and, yes, happy. Her life is just where she wants it.
Joss’s latest single ‘Oh To Be Loved By You’, from the album Never Forget My Love, is out now.
