Breakout Club Poet Joshua Idehen on the Lyrics that Changed His Life
From Dizzee Rascal’s screwface anthem to Rufus Wainwright’s heartfelt wisdom to Björk’s Scandinavian wisecracks, these are the tracks and lines the songwriter keeps closest.
Words Matter is an interview series where songwriters whose work means a lot to us talk about the lyrics that mean a lot to them.
Joshua Idehen’s spoken-word anomaly “Mum Does the Washing” has to be one of the most unlikely breakthrough singles of the decade. The song itself is wildly novel, with the British Nigerian poet and vocalist pithily summing up a laundry list of ideologies through the lens of the track’s titular chore. For instance, feminism means “your mum insists you grow up and do your own washing,” while white feminism means “your mum hired a woman of color to do the washing.” It’s funny, pointed, smart, and, thanks to a minimal house beat courtesy of Idehen’s musical partner Ludvig Parment, you can even dance to it.
The unlikeliness doesn’t end there. Idehen is far from your typical viral Gen Z star. He’s a 45-year-old dad. And he’s been working at the edges of London’s underground poetry and music scenes for the last 20 years, collaborating with everyone from progressive jazz band Sons of Kemet to the electronic duo LV along the way. For the longest time, it didn’t add up to much. In fact, as Idehen tells me from Stockholm, Sweden, where he currently lives, it wasn’t until last year that he could finally afford to move into an apartment that he felt solely responsible for; before that, he shared accommodations with family and friends, roommates and partners. He remembers sitting in the living room of his new place, surrounded by unopened boxes, and starting to cry.
“It’s not the biggest flat, it’s just my flat,” he says with pride. “I cried because it was the first time in my entire life that I had that, and my art had afforded me that luxury.” Fearing the conversation might be leaning a little sappy, he takes the opportunity to poke fun at himself. “It might look like a divorced-dad pad, but it’s mine,” he notes, adding that he and the mother of his 4-year-old daughter, Birdsong, broke up around the same time he was financially able to become a full-time artist in 2025.
Some of Idehen’s past work, like his 2021 collaboration with the veteran electronic and rap producer Daedalus, Holy Water Over Sons, skews dark and haunting, with the vocalist mired in feelings of depression and guilt following a divorce he went through in 2017. But following the move to Sweden and the birth of his daughter during the pandemic, he made a conscious decision to get better—and be better. “There has to be a bigger purpose to all of this pain and hurt than just wallowing in it,” he remembers thinking. This switch-up led to his collaboration with Parment on 2023’s Learn to Swim mixtape and this month’s I Know You’re Hurting, Everyone Is Hurting, Everyone Is Trying, You Have Got to Try, easily the most life-affirming album of 2026 so far.
Alongside joyous house jams, righteous jazz ‘n’ bass, and heart-rending piano balladry, Idehen’s affecting voice and exacting pen are in fine form. He’s able to create entire scenes and lives within a single verse, like on “Could Be Forever,” where he writes of a dentist from Benin City, Nigeria who is forced to clean toilets in London in order to make ends meet. Much of the album plays as if Idehen is performing it to himself in the mirror, exuberant pep talks that can’t help but cascade outward and boost the confidence of anyone in earshot. “I didn’t want cringiness to stand in the way of telling myself that I deserve to be loved, and that is more important than any desire to be cool,” he says of the record’s clubby self-help bent. “Plus, I’m 45—cool is no longer affordable to me.”
As someone who’s about to turn 44 myself, I know exactly what Idehen is talking about. I can still be a sucker for coolness when I see or hear it, but I can also acknowledge that the endless search for that mysterious cultural grail can be exhausting. Sometimes it’s just nice to be reassured by someone who’s been through the wringer and came out alive—rejuvenated, even. If it makes me less cool to admit that I’ve melted on the subway while listening to Idehen’s dancefloor ode “This Is the Place”—specifically when he says, in a pure, empathetic tone, “Everyone’s a bit broken here/Every day can’t be a battle, mate”—well, so be it. Stuffed into a packed train car, those words made me feel less alone.
This is why I wanted to know about the lyrics that move Idehen the most, the ones he knows by heart and can’t let go. He didn’t disappoint. His choices and answers come together to form a mini-autobiography dotted with black zip-up hoodies, one-night stands, and the desire to squeeze purpose out of pain. During our chat, his daughter can sometimes be heard yapping in the background, angling for her dad’s attention. At one point, when she briefly leaves the room, Idehen bids her a deadpan farewell. “Bye bye, Birdsong, take care of yourself,” he says with a wave. “Don’t fight any monsters—run!”
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