THE FUTURE (25 AND UNDER)
At the forefront of queer music, Arlo Parks, the supremely talented — and openly bisexual — poet and singer, is setting the tempo for the next generation of LGBTQ+ artists
Turn up the volume for poet, singer and fast-rising star Arlo Parks, from West London, the voice of 2021 and her generation.
“I’d always loved singing, but never considered writing my own songs”
Having only recently discovered what Sophie’s choice was in the classic 1982 tear-jerker of the same name – oh, Meryl! And I thought choosing between the different varieties of festive hot chocolates in Costa was tough – I decide to give Arlo Parks a (less traumatic) dilemma of her own to wrestle with.
The young poet and singer can only read one book or poem ever again: what will it be? “No!” she playfully protests. “That is so hard… OK, this is a curveball, but I think it would be Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch, because it has all these nuggets of stuff about creativity and consciousness and meditation. There are maybe a hundred or so mini-chapters… it’s kind of the gift that would never stop giving.”
A precocious – not to mention unapologetically queer – talent, 20-year-old Arlo, aka Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho, is being tipped for very big things and has popped up on all the notable “ones to watch” lists. Of course, the pièce de résistance is taking pride of place in Attitude’s 101 The Future category. “It’s quite surreal, especially to be experiencing this growth in a year like this – I can’t quite believe it, because I spend most of my time at home playing Scrabble with my dad and cooking ramen, do you know what I mean?!” she chuckles. “It’s weird how the world has expanded, and the consciousness of my music has expanded so much, but I’m still trying to make sense of it all.”
Not that the Londoner should be too surprised by her success: “I found my old journal from when I was 15 and I was like, ‘Today, I’m unveiling Arlo Parks to the world, I hope I can do this and that I’m gonna help people with this.’ And now I feel like I really am, five years down the line.”
To say Arlo has a way with words is an understatement — a bit like saying Serena
Williams has a decent serve, that Beyoncé knows how to work a stage, or that Rita
Ora doesn’t quite grasp the concept of an impromptu gathering.
Growing up “quite a happy kid” in Hammersmith, Arlo fell in love with literature at an early age – “I started writing my own short stories when I was eight” – before feeling the pull of poetry as a teenager. “I found people like Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, that sense of wild and unconstrained expression, something I hadn’t really experienced in the poetry I learnt at school,” Arlo recalls.
Carol Ann Duffy and her friggin’ onion spring to mind…
After picking up the electric guitar and teaching herself how to produce beats on computer app GarageBand, Arlo decided to pursue music – and what sweet melodies they are. “I started reading poetry on top of beats, kind of spoken-word vibe, and that just morphed into singing,” she says. “I’d always loved singing, but I never considered writing
my own songs. It happened quite organically, one day I just decided I wanted to do it and then I never stopped.”
Chatting on the phone – refreshingly, not over Zoom, so I don’t have to worry about
Arlo recoiling at the sight of me in my stinky, sweaty running gear – the rising star is positively giddy about the release of her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, the title of which is politely pinched from Zadie Smith’s novel, On Beauty.
“I was reading that over lockdown and there was that phrase in there and it had this really bittersweet quality,” she explains. “I imagined surrendering to emotion and you’re not sure whether that is joy or melancholy. Also, the idea of the sun being this healing force – no matter where you are, when the sun is on your skin, it just feels a bit better.”
Shining bright, Arlo cuts through the noise with her contemplative, confessional and powerfully poetic songwriting, whether she is prizing open this country’s mentalhealth crisis, or skating along the cracks of a broken heart.
It is easy to see why Arlo has been anointed “the voice of Generation Z” by the press – but the lofty label doesn’t sit comfortably with her yet: “I can understand because I write a lot about the teenage experience, as it were, and about the emotions and those first losses and heartbreaks and joys that you have. But at the same time, I don’t feel like I’m necessarily speaking for a whole generation. I feel like I’m just talking about myself and my friends and the people around me.
“I’m kind of conflicted about it, because
“I’m speaking to kids who haven’t found an artist they feel understood by”
I don’t want to feel like I’m representing
everybody who is 20 years old,” she states, modestly. “[However] I do like the idea that
I’m speaking to kids, younger people who maybe haven’t found an artist that they feel represented or understood by.”
Standout song Black Dog – which was among the contenders for Annie Mac’s Hottest Record of the Year – sensitively navigates the dark corridors and dead ends of trying to help a friend who is battling depression. I would do anything to get you out of your room, Arlo sings.
At least I know you’re trying, but that’s what makes it so terrifying.
“My best friend, she was just going through this very difficult period of time, where it was difficult to do anything, go anywhere, and I was desperately trying to bring her out of this situation,” she confides. “When you love someone, there is always that urge: what can
I do? What’s the solution? But it was, kind of, like, for no reason, and that’s what made it all the more scary and hard.”
Arlo continues: “The beautiful thing about that song is the fact that she is doing so much better now. When I look back at that time, it’s like, wow, we’ve grown so much and we’re still just as close.”
How did her pal react when she gave it a listen? “There were lots of tears. She was telling me that, you know, I captured the moment… that she could see how much I cared for her in the way I describe the situation.”
The track has registered with fans far and wide, too. “There were people who said that the song had opened up a conversation that saved their marriage, or that their mum was terminally ill and didn’t even speak English, but when she was played the song, she was so happy and felt safe,” Arlo reveals. “It made me really step back and be like, wow, the songs I’m writing in my room are affecting people.”
She adds: “Art has that power to heal and transform.”
Although Arlo mostly tears from the pages of her own life, she is also inspired by the everyday things she witnesses; Caroline, for instance, was sparked by a row she overheard. “I was in Hammersmith Broadway, and there was this couple having a massive argument,” she says. “I only saw them arguing for a few seconds and then I got on my bus, but then as I was sitting there, I constructed this narrative and almost made them into characters.
“I’ve had many supermarket moments [as well], where I’m in the aisle for my dried mango or whatever, and I just overhear [something], especially when it’s couples shopping together, those hushed little conversations.”
Food for thought, indeed.
Arlo, who identifies as bisexual, also retraces the fault lines of her failed relationships with appreciable honesty. Like on Just Go, which features a cheating lover who is caught out by a tell-tale hickey on their neck – Arlo points out that this plot twist was actually lifted from a friend’s experience rather than her own.
“This was not me,” she clarifies, probably picking up on my disappointment at the other end of the phone (one does love a scandal). “The first half of the song is [about] somebody who was very unhealthy and toxic turning up to my house and trying to apologise for the things they’d done, and the second half is: I was relating this story back to a friend of mine, and she was like, ‘Yeah, this thing happened with my boyfriend.’ I thought that they went well together, about how toxic people try and weave their way back into our lives.”
More winning relatability is served on Eugene, as Arlo reminisces about falling for a straight friend – we’ve all been there, hun – who isn’t interested: You read him Sylvia Plath, I thought that was our thing.
“I wrote it at a period of time that I’d got over this situation and being able to revisit it and process it and put the moment into something that was helping other people was super positive,” she maintains. “But, of course,
it was a frustrating situation that I think a lot of queer people have experienced.”
She goes on: “Putting it out into the world and having all these people being, like, oh my God, I’ve never heard a song about this, was just mind-blowing.”
The best artists wear their hearts, dripping and bleeding, on their sleeves, and Arlo admits that being so transparent takes a toll: “After I finished the album, I was more exhausted than anything because I put so much of myself into reliving and rehashing these difficult moments. I hope that it connects because I really had to go into myself.”
Arlo, who finished her A-level studies last year, feels “really fortunate” that her sexuality has never been an issue. “In my family, there was this openness, not just in terms of sexuality, but it was always like: we accept you,” she says. “There was no big drama or ‘reveal’, I think it was mentioned in passing and it was accepted, and I kind of went along with my life – not many people I know can say they’ve had the same experience.”
Although secondary school was drama-free – “I kept to myself, I studied pretty hard” – it was at college that Arlo found herself: “I came into myself and became super extroverted… I guess it comes to a point where you just accept yourself and find your people.”
Looking up to an array of LGBTQ artists, including Sophie, Janelle Monáe and Frank Ocean – “Channel Orange came out when I was 12, and that was such a lesson to me… his writing was so vulnerable” – the fact that Arlo herself is now providing visibility for budding queer musicians isn’t lost on her.
“It’s something that I always hope for,” she ponders. “That kids would see me and feel inspired and feel able to do what they want and be what they want whilst doing that. That’s a goal for me.”
Plucking out the most uplifting lyric on the album – making rainbows out of something painful – I ask Arlo when she last, well, made a rainbow out of something painful.
“Interesting…” she pauses. “I’ve been writing a lot of poetry… basically, I wanted to write a poem about this year. On the surface of it, it is a year that has been dark and confusing and difficult, but I found myself reflecting on the moments of joy, the moments where I did manage to see my friends; or when I got to play Glastonbury; when I taught myself to DJ; or when I cooked gnocchi for the first time.”
And how was the gnocchi? “It was really pang!” she exclaims. “I got full approval from my family, so yeah.”
When we talk, the clusterfuck of a year that is 2020 is drawing to a close — and Arlo stresses that she is in no rush to make any resolutions for 2021. “We’ve definitely learnt this year that you can make all the plans you want, but things are going to happen, however they happen,” she notes. “Being a little bit more comfortable with that is something I’m going to carry into the next year.”
We have a funny feeling that the forecast for the next 12 months is going to be exceptionally sunny for Arlo…
“[For] the album, I put so much of myself into reliving difficult moments”