‘In the music industry, ADHD is my superpower’

Sir Paul McCartney with eight graduates from LIPA. Joe Taylor is fourth from right (Photo: Brian Roberts)[Missing Credit]

Taylor, who describes his style as indie-pop, played his track Best Friend’s Couch, which is due to be released later this month. “McCartney said he thought it was really cool and contemporary. My favourite artist is Dominic Fike – my whole brand is inspired by him. McCartney has done a song with him and said that he could feel the similarity between my song and Fike’s music, which was a huge compliment.”

The other song Taylor played was Coffee Grain, which he released two months ago. “The style is more Beatlesy than the other one, and McCartney said: ‘That’s such a beautiful song.’ He gave me a bit of advice, saying that when I sing the last line, I need to sing it with more passion and look directly at the audience, so they can really feel what I’m saying.”

The north-west Londoner has just signed a two-EP deal, and having just met one of the world’s biggest music icons, it sounds like he is living the dream. But the journey getting there hasn’t been an easy one.

“I’ve always had really severe ADHD and was never able to sit still in class,” he told the JC.

Prior to his diagnosis and briefly going on medication just before turning 15, he would sometimes “get into trouble” at JFS for being restless.

cozyjoe, AKA Joe Taylor[Missing Credit]

The medication helped him to focus and got him through his GCSEs, but the downside was that it “turned off the creative part of my brain and made me disconnect from music. It just left me feeling bland and flat. I would pick up a guitar but couldn’t write a song.”

The experience was anathema to Taylor, who, as the youngest of four children from a creative family, had been playing music since he was six.

“I first picked up a guitar after hearing the song Lego House by Ed Sheeran. It’s such a simple song, with just him and his guitar. I was instantly drawn to it and started guitar lessons.”

When he was ten, his dad showed him a clip of Mark Knopfler playing his famous guitar solo in the Dire Straits’ song Sultans of Swing. “He just made the guitar sing, and that was what inspired me to want to be a performer.”

Deciding to come off his ADHD medication following his GCSEs, Taylor moved to Access Creative College in Shoreditch, Ed Sheeran’s alma mater. “Sheeran was 80 per cent of the reason why I decided to go there. In one of his songs, he sings: ‘I didn’t go to Brit School’, so I became really interested in where he had gone instead. I looked it up and found he had gone to Access. His face is all over the school.”

While lockdown meant that Taylor didn’t go into college as much as he would have liked to, the experience of being at a performing arts school was nonetheless “really cool”, he says. “It was the first time I had been exposed to anything outside of north-west London. I was meeting like-minded people who were on the same wavelength as me, even though we all came from different backgrounds.”

Gaining a distinction in a diploma in music performance, Taylor then toyed with going straight into the music industry. But then he went to see LIPA.

“My time there was great. I was exposed to a whole new world of musicians from all over the world. My best friend is Colombian, and it’s crazy how we were all able to connect just through music.”

cozyjoe[Missing Credit]

Among the highlights was when Sir Paul, who, says Taylor, “lives and breathes the school”, brought in Bruce Springsteen to speak to the students. “Springsteen’s main advice was: ‘Just get out there and do it.’”

But Taylor had been taking this approach ever since he took the decision to come off his ADHD medication.

Also diagnosed with sensory processing disorder (SPD), which can lead to either over-sensitivity or under-sensitivity to sensory input, Taylor says that rather than seeing this and ADHD as conditions which could hold him back, “I decided to embrace them as my superpowers because they have played such a pivotal role in my life in terms of controlling the way I view things and how I write music”. One of the traits of ADHD is the ability to hyperfocus, and Taylor has been known to spend 12 hours straight in his music studio, to the point where me sometimes forgets to eat. 

Being neurodiverse was also why he changed his artist’s name to cozyjoe. “I had never felt comfortable in my body. I had never felt at ease. The SPD meant that I couldn’t eat much food due to the way it tasted and that I couldn’t wear jeans until I was 14, as I didn’t like how they felt.”

The upshot of struggling with the sensation of certain materials was that Taylor had always hated getting dressed up to watch gigs. “People make such an effort when they go to concerts, in terms of what clothing they wear, but there will be at least ten people in the audience who are feeling uncomfortable. I want to make spaces which are inclusive in terms of comfort, where people can come to concerts in pyjamas, beanies and trackies.”

cozyjoe in concert and wearing keep it cozy merchandice[Missing Credit]

To this end, Taylor is launching his own range of comfortable clothing, keep it cozy. But it’s the message which is just as important as the merchandise. “I really want to raise awareness of ADHD and SPD and how they can affect people’s lives.”

And while Taylor’s life may still have its challenges, in some ways, he credits his neurodiversity for his musical success. “It means my mind is often in five different places at once, so it’s given me lots of things to write about, rather than just love and romance. It’s made me freer as an artist.”

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@iamcozyjoe