Songfacts®:

• This song's title sounds almost suspiciously simple, as if it might arrive wearing sunshine and leave without incident. It does not. Built on Dry Cleaning's familiar mesh of wiry, jangled guitars and Florence Shaw's deadpan spoken-word observations, the song turns "joy" into an act of resistance.
• In this song, Florence Shaw renews her commitment to preserving something bright and tender in an increasingly hostile world. The title "Joy" carries both sincerity and defiance.
  
  "Recently I've felt pessimistic about the world," said Shaw. "The influence of what they call 'the manosphere,' the genocide against Palestinians continuing despite huge protests, the rise of the racist Reform party in the UK, the promotion of AI in art and music. I wanted to try and stoke my drive to stay positive and spread softness and compassion. The wishes in the song have a naive quality."
• The chorus is a direct rebuke of toxic masculinity and internet poison
  
  We'll build a cute harmless world
  Don't want one from you, cult
  No, I'll build a cute flower border
  
  "Is a floral border strong enough to hold back all that bad stuff?" wondered Shaw to Uncut magazine when asked about the line. "Probably not. It is pretty fragile! But it's what we've got."
• Shaw's lyrics for "Joy" were assembled from advertisements in Virginia Tech University's History of Food and Drink archive. The approach is entirely in keeping with Shaw's established lyric-writing method, which is closer to collage than conventional songwriting.
• Florence Shaw wrote the song with her bandmates, guitarist Tom Dowse, drummer Nick Buxton and bassist Lewis Maynard, and recorded it as the closing track for Dry Cleaning's third album, Secret Love.
  
  "This was the last song we wrote for the album," Buxton told Apple Music. "It's quite a complicated song because the music is quite uplifting and some of the lyrics are quite uplifting, but I think there is a darkness to it. It's an interesting song to end the album on because it does present itself as being a positive end note, but there is some wariness to it."
• Welsh musician Cate Le Bon produced "Joy." Known for her work with Deerhunter, Devendra Banhart, Wilco, and Horsegirl, Le Bon helmed the entirety of Secret Love, recorded at Black Box Studios in the Loire Valley, France, in May 2025. Dry Cleaning's bond with Le Bon was forged at the Pitchfork Festival in 2022 and cemented when Wilco's Jeff Tweedy introduced them at his Chicago studio, The Loft.
• Dry Cleaning wrote the tracks on Secret Love in various practice rooms, the songs building from improvised sessions before evolving through recordings at Jeff Tweedy's Chicago studio and with Gilla Band's Alan Duggan and Daniel Fox at Sonic Studios in Dublin. "Joy" closes the album pointedly, as Shaw suggests cuteness and sweetness may be a form of barricade, however flimsy.