South London girl Joy Crookes channels the ghost of Amy Winehouse in her infectious summer song When You Were Mine, with its video shot in Brixton Market.

Of all the soundalike singers to spring up after Amy Winehouse (Celeste, Raye…) the one that brings most freshness to the table is Joy Crookes. For me, at least.

The key, I think, is the autobiographical element she injects into her songs, capturing life as a Gen Z girl growing up in South London – especially in this marvellous video shot in Brixton Market.

Then there’s her song London Mine, celebrating the “invisible people” – the immigrants who give our capital, and country, its character: “how London belongs to no one, but everyone,” as she put it.

Born and raised in Elephant & Castle, the daughter of an Irish father and Bangladeshi mother, she started posting covers on YouTube after moving to Ladbroke Grove when her parents split up.

A cover of the Ray Charles song Hit The Road Jack when she was just 14 drew 600,000 views and got the attention of her future manager.

Her first original material followed two years later, in 2016, when she released the self-penned New Manhattan (titled after a district of Brussels) and Sinatra, included on her debut EP Influence the following year.

Huge online success followed after she performed another of the songs, Mother May I Sleep with Danger?, on the online platform COLORS, with her guitarist Charles J Monneraud. It now has more than 14 million views on YouTube.

Crookes issued two more EPs in 2019, Reminiscence and Perception, followed by several singles including Feet Don’t Fail Me Now and her debut album Skin, released in 2021.

Nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, it incorporated some highly personal samples in the songs, including her grandma saying goodbye to her “as she usually does when I leave her flat on the 19th floor of her block in south London” and a voice message from her dad talking about the importance of punk music.

Crookes, who says her musical taste was formed by driving with her father to Irish dancing lessons, has cited artists as diverse as Nick Cave and King Tubby, Black Uhuru and The Pogues, Sinead O’Connor and Kendrick Lamar, as well as Pakistani music from her other side of the family.

You can hear much of that hybrid of influences in this infectiously joyful song.