Top 78 Quotes & Sayings by Arlo Parks
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British singer Arlo Parks.
Last updated on November 4, 2024.
But I think for me, writing poetry when I was younger really helped me to condense an idea or a story into only so many words, because in a song you really only have three, four minutes to have a complete world in this song, so I think it definitely taught me to be concise.
I realised that what I loved was descriptive writing rather than something with a plot.
It's got to be speciality coffee or nothing. I love posh coffee but I have lattes with sugar, so I'm not a purist at all, but it has to be specific or it's just not worth it to me.
When I was growing up, there weren't that many queer girls of colour making music. So I just wanted to be able to exist, just to be that, without putting too much emphasis on it.
We need to let the people around us know that they're loved.
As I'm writing a song, I focus on the music and try not to let my mind wander too much, but if I do think of any visual moments or references that I think would connect nicely, I'll make a note of it.
It sounds cheesy to say it, but I think my motivation has always been to help others.
I've definitely seen the rise of more charities and Mental Health Awareness Week, and people in general seem a lot more open about struggles that they've faced.
As a child I had a wild imagination; from the age of seven I'd sit and write epic stories.
I always found that really helpful; talking something through and vocalising what's wrong. I've found that internalising things just makes them come up in uglier ways further down the line, so it's definitely something I've tried to maintain throughout my life.
My dad loved jazz, so there was a little Miles Davis, Otis Redding, Donny Hathaway. My mum is French, so she'd listen to a lot of French music, but a lot of the music that actually formed my taste, I just found online.
When I feel something, I write it down so I guess technically it's a personal catharsis, but I would really like to help people as I figure myself out.
It's after dark that I feel most inspired, I'm a nocturnal creature. I'll write poetry or streams of consciousness, play instruments, or teach myself to DJ by doing a silent solo set.
I went to see my first gig when I was 15 - it was Loyle Carner at Shepherd's Bush - and I remember just feeling the bass in my feet and in my body. I was so energised.
I'm very extroverted - I'm really social. People have a sense I'm a reserved wallflower, but that's not who I am. My music is inward-looking, and that is a part of me, but I like having a laugh.
It's a very strange thing to suddenly be approached in the street and have streams of messages, and not know how to work through getting bad reviews and hate comments. It's something that can really weigh on the mind and be quite isolating.
I'm journalling, checking in with myself. I write about the week and how it felt, my hopes and plans. I do it every evening, and have done since I was 13.
I write from a personal perspective, but sometimes seeing something in the street like that will spark something that reminds me of my own experiences.
I make sure to sit down for at least five minutes a day to just capture whatever passes through my mind.
All of my songs are so hyper-specific - that they can seem universal is a beautiful thing.
When I was younger, music really saved me, and felt like a refuge for me when I was in quite a lost space. I just want to talk to people, and I guess in a way, feel understood myself.
I definitely think social media does cause this desire to be perfect. It can make kids feel like they've got quite a lot of the weight on their shoulders in terms of how they're supposed to be and what they're supposed to like and how they're supposed to act.
I usually just write a song and record it that day, and then that's kind of it. I'm not very good at going back and editing and tinkering it. It's pretty immediate.
Reading the dictionary helps me express myself better. I can spend hours flicking through a thesaurus, too. It's not about expanding my vocabulary, it's just that I have a very specific taste with words. I'll sit and write lists of them to help me better describe my life.
I realised that being sensitive means you can connect to all kinds of people. I think I've learned that it is a gift as well.
What I want to do with my music is to just encourage vulnerability, and to talk about things even if they're uncomfortable. Everyone has mental health - everyone has a mind that works in different ways and goes through highs and lows.
I picked up the guitar when I was about 14 or 15 maybe, and then I started just messing around with loops on GarageBand, and just building my own beats in my bedroom and then just releasing that on SoundCloud.
I learned a lot of empathy and openness from my parents. I know so many people who don't have that experience.
I was writing short stories aged seven or eight. I had a vivid, overactive imagination.
Honestly, I've been reading a lot of books on visual art. I've been reading a lot of books by Olivia Lang, I've been listening to a lot of folk and singer-songwriter music, but also a lot of electronic and really hard techno. I'm just trying to create something that pulls from everywhere and that hopefully feels unique.
I'm just trusting my intuition and my taste and writing it quickly - I'm glad people are gravitating towards feelings.
My attention span was quite short and I just wanted to use a lot of beautiful words. When I read a poem like 'Howl', or 'Lady Lazarus' by Sylvia Plath, I felt myself being moved - I wanted to do that for other people.
I'm up around 11am to my alarm. Without it I'd sleep into the afternoon.
I feel like people who are older have lived longer and it's harder to impress them. So I always feel super flattered when I see an older couple at my show. I'm like, okay, I must be doing something special.
When you approach the world with such vulnerability and openness, people return that energy. It's draining, but it fills me with a purpose. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
As a person I'm often overwhelmed by emotions, so I write them down.
I really like Pat Parker. I really like Audre Lorde. I read a lot of the Beats when I was younger, so Diane di Prima, Gary Snyder. I've been discovering a lot more modern poems as well.
Know that you can move past things that have happened to you and that healing takes time. Take the lessons you learned in the past and hold them close, but move forward and try not to get trapped in what was.
I would say I'm an outlier. Nobody in my family does anything creative, though my dad loved jazz and my mum likes Prince and 1980s French pop.
My dad was into jazz, so there was a lot of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington playing in the house, but also a lot of soul, such as Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald, while my mum liked Prince and Diana Ross.
When I was seven, I sang 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow' in assembly and the teachers were crying because it was so emotional!
Super Sad Generation' was essentially about the struggles that you go through when you're growing up in the world and trying to figure out what kind of person you want to be.
When you start doing music as your job and there are so many peripheral things around it, it's great to have a reminder to focus on what is good for myself, my body, my health and my work.
Sometimes you can feel like the only person in the world to have struggled in a certain way and there is a shame around that. The way we deconstruct it all is by talking about it, by listening and even within our circles of friends and checking up on each other, making sure that if someone is going through something, they have someone to talk to.
The way that I write is very instinctual and based off raw feeling--I'm a very emotional person and I think that comes across in my writing. Also the songwriting that I enjoy, for example Elliott Smith, Leonard Cohen and Nico tend to be both photographic and visceral.
I wanted to really delve into the idea of reckoning with difficult things in one's past - and celebrating the joyful things, and honoring the stories that have made me who I am.
I really wanted to have a name that was double-barreled. I think at the time I was listening to a lot of Odd Future - like Earl Sweatshirt and Frank Ocean - and I wanted my name to have a ring to it.
To me, nature is so inspiring - that sense of constant change, the way things are cleansed or washed away, and it's beyond your control.
There's nothing that compares to actually being in a room and having that sense of collective experience, feeling the music in your body and having all these people around you.
There are so many individuals. We're not going to all have the same ways of being or priorities or personalities. You can't have this umbrella thing. Even if you look at other artists my age, people are making completely different music and have different goals.
You can tell when a song has come from the heart and is genuine, and it moves you more when you can tell the person really feels what they're saying.
I've always felt very connected to people.
When I started making my own music I was listening to people like Erykah Badu and Elliott Smith. I think I always gravitated towards slightly more understated voices because it felt like I could really connect with what they were saying. It felt more like a conversation.
When I first started writing in the beginning, it was very much surrounding the idea of escape and of fantasy, then when I got a little bit older it very much became a way of looking inward.
When things started to take off, I had more and more to do, and things were happening but I didn't quite have the time to process it or enjoy the positives and think about how far I've come.
Sometimes I'm just giving, and giving to people who aren't always deserving. But I've learned to listen and approach people without judgment. I've had so many conversations with so many different kinds of people - it's opened my heart, which is useful when I'm writing songs.
I've always been a very emotional person and as a child. I guess writing felt like something that I could do in private to process things.
It's important to have a moment where you just stop and look at where you came from.
To be a good artist, you need to be sensitive to the world around you, you need to be curious, you need to listen, you need to be willing to learn from people. A lot of great art is about people being moved by something or seeing something that stops them dead.
Creativity hits me like a lightning bolt. For two weeks ideas overflow and spill from me, before a period of nothing. The prospect of it suddenly just leaving me one day scares me. I'm terrified that every song I write might be my last.
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