Songfacts®:

• "Joy" is a track from Raye's second album, This Music May Contain Hope. It brings her family front and center, with her younger sisters, fellow singer-songwriters Amma and Absolutely, trading verses with her on an upbeat, celebratory track.
• Raye described This Music May Contain Hope as "medicine," and "Joy" serves as one of its clearest moments of optimism: a song about holding on to hope after going through hard times.
• The chorus draws directly on Psalm 30:5 ("Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning"). Raye adapts the line into her own declaration:
  
  I may cry through the night
  But my joy comes in the morning
  
  She pulls another key lyric from Psalm 91:4 ("He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge"). In the song, she turns that scripture into a prayer for protection:
  
  Cover me with Your feathers, Father
  Shelter me with Your wings
• The track opens with a vocal loop sampled from "Damn Right I Am Somebody" by Fred Wesley & The J.B.'s, where James Brown asks, "Mr. Ray, are you somebody?" Raye told Apple Music's Zane Lowe that hearing the line sparked the idea for the song. She looped the sample into her own composition, using the question as a clever play on her name.
  
  Raye answers Brown directly in the post-chorus, singing, "I declare I am somebody."
• Raye wrote "Joy" alongside her sisters Lauren Keen (Amma) and Abby-Lynn Keen (Absolutely), as well as producers Tom Richards and Mike Sabath.
  
  Raye and Sabath wrote several of the album's major tracks, including "Joy," "Where Is My Husband!," "Skin & Bones" and "Beware.. the South London Lover Boy," during a writing trip to Big Bear Lake, California, in early 2025.
• Both of Raye's sisters have impressive resumés:
  
  Lauren Keen (Amma) co-wrote ArrDee and Cat Burns' 2023 hit "Home For My Heart," along with songs for FLO, JoJo, and NAO.
  
  Abby-Lynn Keen (Absolutely) has co-writing credits on Jesy Nelson's "Boyz" (featuring Nicki Minaj), Normani's "Fair" and the Teddy Swims and Giveon duet "Are You Even Real."
  
  Raye's sisters have opened for her on tour and joined her onstage to perform "Joy" at various live dates, including her headline performance at the Reading Festival.
• Directed by Otis Dominique, the music video takes a hands-off, documentary approach. Raye, Amma, and Absolutely drive around London in a van nicknamed the "Joymobile," handing out sunflowers to strangers and capturing their spontaneous reactions. It's the fourth video Dominique shot for Raye following "Escapism," "Flip A Switch" and "Genesis."
• "Joy" sits as Track 15 on This Music May Contain Hope. The double album functions as a concept record split into the four seasons, with each vinyl side dedicated to a season. "Joy" appears in the summer section (Act IV) alongside "Fields," "Happier Times Ahead," and the closing track, "Fin," signaling the album's move from darkness into light.
• Work on the album was disrupted in October 2024 when Raye's car was stolen with her songbooks inside. At the time, she warned fans that there would be "no second album any time soon." Police eventually recovered the car with the songbooks untouched, keeping This Music May Contain Hope on track for release on March 27, 2026.