At the end of the day… Joss Stone

I’m all over the place: I’m often in New Jersey, but my hub is in Devon, and I’ve been in the Bahamas songwriting for a while and working on my podcast, which is all about happiness. I’ve travelled to every country in the world and had more experiences than I ever thought I’d have. But it’s funny how similar we all are: we think we’re different but we’re not. We all want to find our own version of ‘happy’. So I had a mountain of questions about this mental state. It’s a cool thing to investigate.

Most evenings I’ll make dinner for my boyfriend, Cody, and we’ll watch the news. I’ve never watched so much news than I have since being with this guy. Then we’ll get angry at the news, and I’ll try and calm down by going, ‘Well, look at it from a positive perspective.’ Then, when we’re fed up of that, we’ll put on Dog Whisperer With Cesar Millan, which is one of my favourite things. I love anything with dogs.

I’m a vegetarian but if someone else wants to eat meat then I will cook it for them – it doesn’t bother me to put it on a plate: it’s dead already, what are you going to do? I love to cook for people. I make a good veggie lasagne, I love making pies and I’m good at curry but you need the right spices.

I’ve been watching 90 Day Fiancé, which is hilarious, but awful. You’ve got different characters who have fallen in love with somebody in another country and since it’s American-made it’s presented as if America is the best, and the people from the other countries are portrayed as just in it for the visa. But sometimes they really are in love, and I always want it to work out. When it goes well, it’s lovely and so romantic. I love romance: I’ve also started watching Indian Matchmaker. I considered arranged marriages before I met Cody, because I couldn’t find a man.

I can put my phone down at the end of the day, easily. I like to switch off. I’m very present with whoever I’m with. That is my job: if I’m singing a song to someone, I am really singing it to them.

Before lockdown started my mum happened to be in Florida and I was up in New Jersey. She called me to tell me I had to come down, because lockdown was going to start, the world was going to go crazy and we were going to be separated. I said it was going to be fine and nothing was going to happen. She didn’t stop sending me news stories and I didn’t even look beyond the headlines: I knew it was sad and I don’t like sad. But, since she was in such a state, I drove down anyway. So I got in the car, drove 18 hours and, sure enough, everything did go into lockdown and the world did go crazy. She was 100% right, so it was good that I was with her. She’s back in the UK now and I want to fly home soon.

I’m in bed at midnight or 1am.

I used to go much later than that, when I used to drink more wine. I’ll brush my teeth, put my hair in a braid and get into bed. I don’t have a body clock anymore. I’ve travelled the world. If you’ve been doing that for years, you can sleep any time of day. And I have weird dreams. Last night I had one about dinosaurs and how humans got here. It’s so strange.

Joss’s podcast A Cuppa Happy is available on Spotify and itunes