Get to know Arlo Parks, the sound of young London

Signed while still at school and now lauded by Billie Eilish, Arlo Parks is a singer — and poet — on the rise. She talks to Tom Ellen about meeting her heroes, imposter syndrome and why she’s proud to speak of the experiences of queer people
STUSSY shirt, £125 (stussy.co.uk). Jewellery, Arlo’s own. Styled by Jessica Skeete-Cross
Ekua KinG
Tom Ellen25 September 2020

Ask most musicians how they prepared for their first gig and you’ll hear stories of nervous pacing, motivational huddles and stress-induced lager consumption.

For Arlo Parks, the experience was rather different. ‘I was running late because I’d been in double history at school,’ the 20-year-old laughs. ‘It was a looooong lesson — 17th-century stuff, Charles II — and I just remember running straight out of class to get the train to the gig. I did that a lot in the beginning,’ she adds. ‘Straight from school to an interview, or straight from school to a label meeting. It was all very “double life” vibes…’

A little over a year since that first performance — at Brighton’s Great Escape festival — and Parks’ ‘double life’ has been streamlined significantly. Rather than dividing time between coursework and concerts, she is now firmly established as one of British pop’s most exciting prospects. Her latest single, ‘Hurt’, was Annie Mac’s Hottest Record In The World on Radio 1, and her extremely vocal famous fan base includes celebrities from Billie Eilish and Phoebe Bridgers to Lily Allen and Loyle Carner.

‘Stuff like that just feels surreal,’ Parks admits as we settle down in Streatham’s sun-dappled Rookery Gardens ahead of her ES photo shoot. ‘If I see a comment from those kinds of people online my first reaction is that it’s a joke. Like my friends have set up a fake account…’ These self-deprecating conspiracy theories are getting harder to maintain, however. Eilish recently gushed about Parks on a podcast, and Bridgers’ enthusiastic praise has lead to a flurried exchange of DMs. ‘I’m trying to be chilled, but mainly it’s just me fangirling at her,’ Parks grins. ‘Lyrically, she’s one of my biggest inspirations.’

Parks’ natural humility won’t allow her to admit it but she is very much part of this new vanguard — led by the likes of Eilish and Bridgers — of young female artists producing raw, brutally honest, hyper-sensitive pop music that forges an intense bond with fans. ‘If you go from Billie to Phoebe to me, we’re sonically quite different but I guess we’re all making this vulnerable, emotional music,’ she says. ‘I’m not on their level, though,’ she’s quick to stress. ‘I’m still at the start.’

ALISTER MACKIE shirt, £760, at matchesfashion.com. RECEPTION trousers, £165, at couvertureandthegarbstore.com
Ekua King

It is, you suspect, only a matter of time. Sipping camomile tea in a muted Hawaiian shirt and combat trousers, Parks seems every bit a star in the making: funny, charming, eloquent, self-assured without ever appearing arrogant. The past 12 months have seen her profile rise thanks to a string of superb, delicately spun indie-soul singles that have grappled with sexuality (‘Eugene’), depression (‘Black Dog’) and even an Allen Ginsberg-esque howl of lament for her Gen Z peers (‘Super Sad Generation’, which features the memorable opening refrain: ‘When did we get so skinny?/Start doing ketamine on weekends’).

Her inclination to lay bare with searing honesty her own experiences means that fan encounters tend to be more profound than your average request for a selfie. ‘I had someone tell me recently that “Black Dog” had started this important conversation about mental health that had saved their marriage.’ She shakes her head, still seeming mystified at the idea of it. ‘It’s really quite mad how these songs have travelled.’

Does she feel she’s reached another level this year? ‘Not at all, actually,’ she laughs. ‘The numbers are going up and I’m doing cool stuff, but I’m still just chilling in my family’s house or going to Tesco or to my dad’s allotment.’ Part of the reason for this, of course, is that what was supposed to be a ‘year of motion’ for Parks has been well and truly bulldozed by Covid-19. As we speak, the singer should be on tour in the US, supporting Paramore’s Hayley Williams. ‘I had 35 to 40 festivals planned, too,’ she sighs.

Although critical of the Government’s handling of the pandemic (‘It has been generally quite shambolic, hasn’t it?’), Parks is typically stoic about her own lockdown experience. ‘This year has been a strange kind of awakening,’ she says, twisting her gold necklace thoughtfully. ‘Normally in life there are all these distractions but in lockdown all that stuff was gone. You were forced to just sit and think. Creatively, it had its benefits.’

ERES shirt, £425; GUCCI vest, £500, both at matchesfashion.com. RECEPTION trousers, £165, at couvertureandthegarbstore.com. NIKE trainers, £84.95 (nike.com). Jewellery, Arlo’s own
Ekua King

She spent the period with her parents and 17-year-old brother in the west London house she grew up in, ploughing her way through not only an impressive reading list (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Baudelaire), but also her own cache of teenage diaries. The latter fed straight into the foundations of her hugely anticipated debut album, which she has been working on this summer.

‘I was writing the record over lockdown, and I wanted it to be about the conversations and situations that made me who I am today. Re-reading my diaries helped with that. I found one, from when I was about 15, where I’d written: “One of my life goals is for someone I don’t know to listen to my music and like it.” It was cool because that really didn’t feel possible back then, and now…’ She shrugs. ‘I guess I’ve always had imposter syndrome — that feeling of “What am I doing here? How did I get here?” — so moments like that feel… nice.’

Imposter syndrome was not something the young(er) Arlo Parks struggled with. Born in Hammersmith in 2000 to a Nigerian accountant father and a Chadian-French mother who worked in secondary schools, she was a self-proclaimed ‘total attention seeker’ as a child: ‘Singing, dancing, “everyone look at me!” It was only when I got older that I became shyer and more introspective.’ Her first language was French — she still speaks it exclusively with her mum — and though her parents were ‘definitely not artists’, it was listening to her dad’s jazz records that first sparked an interest in music and creativity generally. ‘I was very in my own head as a kid,’ she says. ‘But I liked it there! I was just writing poetry, writing stories, writing plays. I think I was quite strange. But I was happy.’

ISSEY MIYAKE coat, £2,040; trousers, £820 (020 7851 4620). CONVERSE trainers, £75 (converse.com). Jewellery, Arlo’s own
Ekua King

Unsurprisingly for someone who peppers her lyrics with references to Twin Peaks, Sylvia Plath and The Cure, Parks comes to life most vividly when you ask about her formative influences. ‘Oh man, okay,’ she says, sitting up and drumming the table. ‘So, when I was, like, 12 or 13 it was all Arctic Monkeys, The Stooges, Pixies. Then hip-hop for a bit. Then I found Erykah Badu, John Martyn, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Kraftwerk…’ You get the feeling that, were there not a photographer waiting for us, she could happily continue for hours.

At 15 she began making her own songs — ‘spoken word, hip-hoppy stuff’ — and uploading them to SoundCloud. ‘All very embarrassing,’ she deadpans. ‘They’re gone now.’ They’ll be worth some money someday, surely? She rocks with laughter in her chair: ‘You would not be saying that if you’d heard them!’ Happily, these early attempts blossomed and matured, and after uploading her stuff to BBC Music Introducing (the BBC’s platform for new artists), she bagged a manager and record label. Christened Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho, she chose Arlo Parks as a stage name in a nod to the blunt, attention-grabbing monikers of her early heroes, Frank Ocean and King Krule.

It was also around this time — mid-to-late teens — that Parks came out as bisexual. She reflects with warmth on how accepting her family was about her sexuality. ‘There’s always a sense of fear around coming out but I felt so supported by the people in my life,’ she says. ‘So, yeah, I was nervous about that conversation but I knew that they loved me. I’m so grateful for that — my home was always my sanctuary, my haven. Not everyone has that.’

However, the isolation that many kids feel growing up as ‘outsiders’ is clearly something that affects Parks deeply. With songs such as ‘Eugene’ — on which she describes falling ‘half in love’ with a female friend — she is proud to ‘speak about the experiences that queer people have gone through. Not speak for those people, but hopefully speak to them, you know? And a lot of people have reached out, saying, “The fact that you’re so open about who you are has helped me to come out, too.”’

VALENTINO shirt, £725 (valentino.com). Jewellery, Arlo’s own
Ekua King

It’s in exchanges like these — intimate, personal conversations — that Parks feels real change is achieved. When we touch on the recent Black Lives Matter protests she tells me she believes the most important, positive results have come from the ‘uncomfortable’ private discussions that movement has provoked. ‘It felt like a period when everyone was learning and becoming more aware, and that’s always a good thing,’ she says. ‘It can be uncomfortable, but then… growth is always uncomfortable.’

As our time together draws to a close I wonder aloud about Parks’ ambitions beyond the release of her debut album. Is there anyone whose career trajectory she particularly admires? Her answer is instant: ‘Childish Gambino! It’s that polymath thing. I’m interested in so many different things — I’d like to write a novel, a book of poetry, I’d love to act — and he does it all: music, acting, writing. And he’s sick at all of it.’ Of course, in a parallel universe, Parks’ chances of following in his footsteps would be slim to none. In 2019, she won a place at UCL to study English literature, and that’s where she’d be right now — ‘maybe getting into journalism or law’ — if she hadn’t picked music instead.

‘It was a big decision,’ she admits. ‘I think my parents would have been more sceptical if nothing was happening with my music. But they could see it was growing. I’m quite a dreamy person but I’m also very realistic about my possibilities, so if this was meant to remain a hobby I would have kept it as that. But I feel like music goes in waves and when you get an upward swing, you have to push it as far as you can.’

She finishes her tea and grins as we step out to meet the photographer. ‘I didn’t want to be 80 years old telling people: “Oh, I could’ve been a singer, you know…”’

Arlo Parks’ single ‘Hurt’ is out now on Transgressive

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