Arlo Parks writes a song using stream-of-consciousness
London’s Arlo Parks is one of the most well-respected songwriters in the music industry now. Her debut studio album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, earned universal acclaim and scooped the highly-coveted Mercury Prize in 2021, setting the foundations for a successful future career.
Discussing her process for writing a song, Parks recently noted in an interview with The Talks: “I’ll start with a kind of stream-of-consciousness; a lot of my writing is actually freeform, or it’s just adding to that little bank of phrases and conversations. Sometimes I’ll have like a verse maybe, or even a hook that I’ve already written down somewhere, and I’ll listen to an instrumental and that will kind of spark something in me.”
However, the words are not always the first things that spring to mind when it comes to writing a song for Parks. “Sometimes it starts with melody,” she said, “So I have a chord progression and drums, and then I’ll voice a melody over the top of that. And then I’ll kind of rummage through my notes and find something that strikes a similar chord in me as the music goes, or maybe I’ll break down a poem to use as lyrics, if that makes sense.”
Parks has been praised for her lyrics that showcase a high level of both versatility and vulnerability. However, when asked whether she thinks there is a difference between certain kinds of words, say, between poetry, lyrics and just plain old words, Parks is sceptical about differentiating between them. “I don’t think there is one,” she said. “Anything can be a poem, and when I write it’s just putting the words down on paper; I don’t really have any kind of preconceived idea of what its final form will be, it just all kind of comes spilling out with me from the same place.”
She added: “Poetry doesn’t necessarily need to be some erudite thing. Your mom telling you a story is just as much poetry as some old 17th century thing that no one really understands. I think that those boundaries should be broken down! Everything I write comes from the same instinctive place anyway.”
But like all great writers, Parks aims to write every day. Although she is adamant in insisting that she does not “force it out” of herself, but rather allows it to arise naturally. “I’m kind of trying to explore writing as a practice, so you know, I journal every day, I try and do kind of something for the art every day whether that’s reading or watching film or practicing guitar,” she said.
Naturally, the level of creativity can vary from day to day to Parks, but simply being creative at a bare minimum every single help helps her to get into the mindset of being an artist. “It kind of ebbs and flows,” she admits, “But I do try and do something creative every day. When it comes to writing poetry or songs, I really have to have an idea or have that desire to get something down. I feel like the best art comes from a sense of necessity and urgency, like I can’t help but talk about this. I can only be in that creative space when I really want to and when internally it feels right.”
