Samara Joy won Best New Artist at the Grammys. Here's how she got there.

The world was introduced to nan soft sounds of Samara Joy Sunday nighttime astatine nan 65th Annual Grammy Awards when she took location 2 Grammys, including nan highly coveted Best New Artist.

But scroll done TikTok and you mightiness travel crossed videos of Joy singing. As a Gen Z-er, Joy has tapped into nan societal media app, utilizing her sound and characteristic to summation hundreds of thousands of followers who battalion pop-up jazz shows to witnesser her talents.

"People travel up to me, 'I saw you connected Tik Tok, and past I recovered retired you were coming to my metropolis and I bought tickets instantly conscionable because of really overmuch your sound impacted me,'" Joy told CBS News, earlier she won 2 Grammys. 

Joy said she has to for illustration a song's melody and words to beryllium capable to put her ain modern rotation connected it. 

"Then we tin get to really to make nan opus my own," she said.

Before performing astatine jazz clubs, Joy had ne'er stepped ft successful one, but that doesn't mean she was exposed to jazz music. Music runs successful Joy's family. Her grandparents started a gospel group, The Savettes of Philadelphia, and her begetter is simply a bass player. 

In precocious school, Joy began to works her ain seed successful nan genre, playing successful a jazz set for a mates of months earlier deciding conscionable really acold she wanted to spell pinch her talent. 

"I was singing pinch them, you know, doing a mates of gigs pinch them from clip to time," said Joy, who was calved and raised successful nan Bronx. "But past erstwhile it came clip to take a assemblage ... 'I don't cognize wherever I want to go, but I cognize I want to support euphony successful my life.'"

Samara Joy accepts nan Best New Artist grant onstage during nan 65th GRAMMY Awards astatine Crypto.com Arena connected February 05, 2023 successful Los Angeles, California.  Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

She studied jazz astatine Purchase College, State University of New York. Shortly aft graduating successful 2021, Joy performed her first group astatine nan celebrated jazz club, Mezzrow, successful New York's West Village neighborhood. It was present that she was introduced to an underground world of euphony that she said she ne'er imagined she would beryllium a portion of.  

She released her self-titled caller album, "Samara Joy," successful 2021. But it was her sophomore album, "Linger Awhile," released a twelvemonth later that sewage her 2 Grammy nominations, for Best New Artist and Best Jazz Vocal Album. She learned of her information while connected an Amtrak train.

"I was successful a quiet car .... silently screaming, silently, until I sewage disconnected nan train," she recalled. "And that's nan first clip that I really felt for illustration my bosom is conscionable benignant of for illustration successful my stomach."

In her acceptance reside Sunday night, she thanked everyone who has listened to her aliases supported her. 

"All of you are truthful inspiring to maine and truthful to beryllium present ...  conscionable being myself, conscionable being who I was calved as, it's just, I'm truthful thankful," she said. 

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