In 2001, 13-year-old Joss Stone was named the champion of the BBC talent show
Junior Star for a Night. Having successfully made it through the audition stages with her renditions of Aretha Franklin's "
You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman" and Whitney Houston's "
It's Not Right but It's Okay," Stone ultimately triumphed in the televised broadcast with her performance of Donna Summer's "
On the Radio."
Stone is dyslexic and left education with minimal qualifications at the age of 16. "I absolutely hated school," she revealed in an interview with
The Guardian. "I'm dyslexic and not enough was done to help kids like me. You need a different kind of teaching, because telling a kid 'learn this' when they're feeling pissed off doesn't work. Mum and Dad were understanding about the fact that I wasn't academic and just said, 'That's not your thing. You can do something else.'"
The Devon-raised artist was signed to S-Curve Records and released her debut album,
The Soul Sessions, in 2003. The retro covers collection features a range of songs from American soul and R&B veterans, including Betty Wright, Latimore, Willie "Little Beaver" Hale, and Timmy Thomas. Headed by the sultry, gender-flipped White Stripes cover "
Fell in Love With a Boy,"
The Soul Sessions was a sleeper hit in the US, peaking at #39 on the Billboard 200 eight months after it came out.
In 2004, at 17 years and five months, Stone became the youngest woman to top the chart in the UK with her sophomore album, Mind Body & Soul. She held on to this impressive record until 2019, when, at 17 years and three months, Billie Eilish went to #1 with her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?.
The "
You Had Me" singer is known for performing barefoot. While some have assumed this is a reflection of her free-spirited nature, Stone explained in an interview with
Irish Examiner that, given her 5' 10" stature, she simply struggles to stand in heels. "I'm totally clumsy, especially when I'm on stage because you gotta get into it and sometimes your whole body is involved so you can't trust yourself to stay standing," she said.
She made her film acting debut as the fortune teller Angela in the Stefen Fangmeier-directed fantasy movie Eragon in 2006. In 2009, Stone went on to make her television acting debut in the Showtime historical-fiction series The Tudors as the fourth wife of King Henry VIII, Anne of Cleves.
Following her appearance at the
Brit Awards in 2007, Stone faced a significant backlash in the UK. Ahead of presenting the award for British Male Solo Artist, she spoke in what sounded like an American accent while erratically circling the stage. Stone was attempting to defend her friend, singer Robbie Williams, against jokes made by the ceremony's host, comedian Russell Brand, about the former Take That member entering rehab. The British tabloids responded by ridiculing her, leading Stone's record label to cancel all of her press appearances in the country.
Stone was a member of the one-off supergroup SuperHeavy alongside The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, Eurythmics founder
Dave Stewart, Bob Marley's son Damian Marley, and Indian composer A. R. Rahman. The band was formed after Jagger and Stewart grew curious to hear how their eclectic genres would mix. SuperHeavy released their self-titled debut album on September 19, 2011, headed by the single "
Miracle Worker."
Two men were arrested on suspicion of plotting to rob and murder Stone in 2011. The pair got within kilometers of her home in Devon before being stopped by suspicious neighbors. Stone was reportedly targeted by the men because she's close friends with Prince William and Prince Harry of the British royal family. "What happened to me in 2011 has made me lock my doors and have an alarm system, whereas I didn't before," she later told
The Sunday Times. "It does make you safety conscious. Although that's another blessing, isn't it? Because I wasn't before and now I am."
In 2014, Stone embarked on her fifth tour, the Total World Tour, with the aim of visiting every country on Earth. Over the next five years, she made considerable progress toward her goal.
Stone performed illegally in Syria in 2019, followed by a show in the notoriously secretive North Korea a few weeks later. However, when she arrived in Iran for the final stop of the tour on July 4, 2019, Stone bumped up against strict regulations and was detained and deported from the country.
The "
Super Duper Love" songstress was crowned the winner of the second season of
The Masked Singer in the UK in 2020. Stone spent the entire competition disguised as a sausage, despite being a lifelong vegetarian. "It was the funniest, most hilarious job I've ever had. I feel like I've won the world," Stone said after beating out Badger, aka Grammy Award-winning singer Ne-Yo.
Stone and her partner, American musician and military veteran Cody DaLuz, share two children. Their daughter, Violet Melissa, was born on January 29, 2021, and their son, Shackleton Stoker, arrived on October 18, 2022. They moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 2022.
Stone and DaLuz married on November 2, 2023. The English singer decided to tie the knot after she went to see the stage show of The Time Traveller's Wife. At the end of the musical's first act, a wedding bouquet was thrown from the stage into the audience. It landed near Stone, who took it as a sign.
