Arlo Parks for Yes Plz
Originally in print for Yes Plz Weekly
Four months ago Arlo Parks was like any other teenager growing up in South West London.
With parents of Nigerian, Chadian, and French heritage, Parks learned to speak French before English, setting her up for a spare, quiet childhood that she filled with her imagination. In elementary school a teacher recognized her potential, encouraging her to pursue poetry, and giving her some of the Beat poets to read for inspiration. Eventually, poetry and fantasy stories became music as Parks started laying down some of her prodigious output in her bedroom late at night, uploading tracks to SoundCloud and garnering a small following. One of those followers was Ali Raymond, co-founder of Beatnik Creative, an artist development company and re- cord label based in London. Within the year Parks had taken down all her self-produced music, recorded her debut single “Cola,” and filmed a spare, sumptuous music video for the track.
Late last November “Cola” went up on Spotify and SoundCloud, and became a breakaway hit. At the time of writing it has over one hun- dred thousand views on Spotify and another fifty thousand on Sound- Cloud. Speaking to her over the phone from her home in London, I ask Parks what her reaction was to the immediate success of that track was. “It’s pretty wild, to be honest,” she tells me, “I have people reaching out, saying ‘Cola’ is has touched them, or moved them, or related to their current situation, and it’s kind of crazy. I remember waking up when it had a thousand plays, and I was telling my mom, ‘Cola’ is blowing up! and now it’s gone way beyond my expectations.”
Like many of her generation, Parks shows a stunning level of composure and wisdom for her age. Assuming that she will want to act fast and capitalize on her newfound success, I ask her when the full length album will be coming out, but Parks is ambivalent to that traditional marker of success, preferring to craft her image and nurture her audience rather than commit to a project that she isn’t ready for. “I want to be really sure about what I want the record to talk about, and I’m still discovering my sound sonically, and the contents of it.” She tell me. “I’ve definitely got some new tracks coming out this year, but in terms of a full cohesive project it will probably be a while.”
What follows is the rest of our conversation about Park’s influences and creative process, edited for length.
What sort of music did your parents listen to when you were a kid?
A massive range. I grew up with jazz around the house, my dad was a jazz head, a lot of Miles Davis, Coltrane, Chet Baker, that kind of thing.
What music did you listen to when you were growing up?
I was listening to a lot of Eminem—it was just Eminem for a bit—and then I got into other rappers like MF DOOM, Q-Tip, that kind of thing, and more recently I’ve been listening to a lot of rock, like Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, The Cure, The Strokes, quite a wide range of stuff I’d say.
What is your songwriting process like?
Usually, I’ll see or experience something that catches me off guard or that I’m intrigued by and I’ll write for ten minutes straight, stream of consciousness style, and I’ll pick out key images or items that I like, and I’ll structure it a bit more depending on the instrumentals that I’m working with. Either that or I’ll go back into my folders and folders of poetry and I’ll pick one out and refine it a bit.
You have a really exceptional eye for detail in your songwriting. Has that always been a part of your creative process?
I think so, because I’m quite into films and visual art, so most of my songwriting has little snippets or images that I think make the story a bit more alive. That’s something that has always characterized my writing, because I spent my childhood out in nature, and the poems I always enjoyed were the ones that had so much detail that you felt like you were actually there.
It’s often written about you that “At the age of 17 she found who she was and shaved her head, figured out she was bisexual, and wrote an album’s worth of material.” Can you tell me a lit- tle about that? What was hap- pening at that time in your life?
I think it was just a process of grow- ing up. As a person I’m always looking for answers, and I wasn’t really sure about who I was as an artist and a person, and it was kind of like a lightbulb moment. I was staying up late, it was 3 a.m., and I was just writing. Usually when I write I try to be as honest with myself as possible, and that time I was like, “Literally, just write what’s on your mind” and I just came up with something and I was like “Woah, ok, this is me.” It was one of those weird nights that is slightly surreal, but from that point on—I’d always wanted to shave my head, but then I thought it might look trash—I told my mom I wanted to go to the hair salon the next day to shave my head, and she was like, “Ok.”
You’ve said that “‘Cola’ is a reminder that betrayal is inevitable when it comes to pretty people that think flowers fix everything,” what does that mean to you?
The song was taken from a lot of different stories that people have told me, and some personal experience, people that thing that they can go off and hurt you or disrespect you, and then just bring you flowers or gifts and that it excuses that behavior, and I think that’s a messed up concept. I was thinking about how when someone brings you flowers it’s supposed to be a gift, but it can be an excuse sometimes.