Martyn Joseph is a completely unique and mind-blowing artist. Take everything you think you know about singer-songwriters and rip it up. For one man and a guitar he creates a performance with a huge far-reaching sound that is energetic, compelling and passionate. Be it to two hundred people or twenty thousand, he blows the crowd away night after night.
After being signed to Sony Music in the early ’90’s, for whom he recorded two albums and achieved top forty chart success, Martyn Joseph became a trailblazer for independent musicians. He launched his own record label in 1999 forging a successful career using the internet, ahead of many other artists.
In November 2025 he released his 28th studio album, Troubled Horses, in Martyn’s own words, “I wanted to create a record that felt up-close and personal, songs that are sitting right next to you, on the edge of too close for comfort.” It’s an album of haunting, elegiac songs, acoustically recorded pared back lo-fi snapshots.
In 2024 he was invited by BBC Radio 2 for a second time to write a song as part of their brand new award winning “21st Century Folk” project, penning and performing Chapel Porth Beach, to mark the 200th Anniversary of the RNLI. This was following on from the success of his 2023 track, Albert’s Place, which featured in the original series, and which included appearances on BBC Breakfast TV, the Jeremy Vine and Ken Bruce shows on BBC Radio 2 along with Radio 4’s World at One.
He is gifted with the rare ability to speak to the soul with his expressive and poignant lyrics and has a career spanning over forty years, twenty-seven studio albums, over a half a million record sales and thousands of live performances.
Compared to Bruce Springsteen, John Mayer, Bruce Cockburn and Dave Matthews, he has created his own style and reputation as a mesmerising live performer and stands in his own right, built on a reputation for giving what thousands have described as the best live music experience of their lives.
Concerned with making music that is relevant and vital to his audience, he engages with challenging narratives tackling the complexity of the human condition, underpinned with a promise of hope. In his own words “I guess I try to write songs that can step up and speak to that given moment in time. A good song makes you feel like you’re not alone in the world.”
Martyn is also founder, along with his wife Justine, of the “Let Yourself Trust”. LYT works alongside Martyn’s music to help give profile to and fund Grassroots organisations across the globe. They have given away over a million pounds to over twenty different projects in the last eleven years.
Reviews
“Martyn Joseph is who John Hammond thought he was getting when he signed Springsteen to Columbia Records in 1972”
Dave Marsh : Rolling Stone
“Stunning, heartfelt music”
Bob Harris BBC Radio 2
“Relevant, challenging and vital”
Songlines
“Folk Legend”
Gary Davies BBC Radio 2
“Genuine emotional clout…and must count as one of his best”
MOJO “1960”
“I couldn’t help but be reminded of Springsteen’s Nebraska”
Irish Music Magazine (1960 review)
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