Yesterday September started with an exciting new delivery from COLORSXSTUDIOS. Songwriter and poet Arlo Parks joined the platform, which is famous for shining a spotlight on emerging and diverse artists, for a Q&A as well as a performance of her new single Hurt.
Hurt, which debuted on August 18 as Annie Mac’s hottest record of the week, is a powerful song that explores alcoholism and depression. Her performance of it for COLORSXSTUDIOS takes place in front of a plain rust orange background and in it she displays artistic confidence beyond her years.
COLORSXSTUDIOS, in the same vein as MTV unplugged and Tiny Desk Concert, is all about paired-down production ‘without distraction’. Whats interesting is that Park’s voice sounds virtually the same on COLORS as it does on the single itself, a testament to her natural talent and the veracity of her records.
When asked the question ‘what motivates you at the moment‘ Arlo replies: ‘helping others… thats always been something that has driven me‘. She cites this as one of the main reasons for sharing her art with the world. This makes sense when you consider Park’s songs as a catalogue of human conditions.
On her first EP, the eponymous track Super Sad Generation was a soulful lament to her contemporaries. Parks sang over a tight percussive beat ‘we’re a super sad generation// killing time and losing our paycheques‘.
In the next verse, she moves into spoken-word, softly saying ‘We’re bugging out it’s not hard to see// Dropped three tabs quick in the back of the Prius’. Parks is putting words to the shared ‘generational-anxiety’ of “Gen-Z” to make sense of her own feelings but also to help listeners make sense of theirs.
Her single Eugene, released in February this year, is about having ‘complicated feelings towards someone you’ve known for a long time’. Parks said she has had this experience before, which makes sense given how honest and personal the song feels.
Eugene takes its listeners on a journey by telling a story, a story that most people have lived but not heard in the form of a catchy song on Radio 1. Park’s is helping listeners by showing them that they’re not alone in falling ‘half in love’ and feeling jealous watching their best mate go off with a new boyfriend.
COLORSXSTUDIO then asks Parks if she is afraid of being vulnerable, and to this she replies that, for her, ‘the fear of being vulnerable is outweighed by the beauty of connection’. This is clearly true for such an honest artist who uses her song-writing skills to make others feel less alone, in the same way that a good writer can echo our own thoughts back to us on the page.
