The Bill Ryder-Jones song that healed Arlo Parks
It’s always nice to see two musicians hyping each other up. In an industry that is as cut throat as it comes, it’s easy to slip into competitiveness and forget the love of the craft that started it all. At the end of the day, all musicians are music fans at their core, and all have their favourite songs and artists that keep them motivated. For Arlo Parks, Bill Ryder-Jones is one of them.
Bill Ryder-Jones and Arlo Parks have had vastly different careers. Parks seemed to blow up out of nowhere. In 2020, only a year after her first ever gig, her tracks ‘Black Dog’ and ‘Eugene’ suddenly had the world gripped. Merging poetry with modern beats and singing it all with the most angelic voice imaginable, her music proved hypnotic. Later that same year, her debut album Collapsed In Sunbeams picked up the coveted Mercury Prize and her position as the new big thing was set.
Ryder-Jones, on the other hand, has gone through many iterations and phases on his way up to the top of the industry. At first, back in the 1990s, he founded the indie band The Coral. Then he delivered a left-field instrumental, orchestral debut album before settling into the gentle indie sound we’ve come to know and love on records like West Kirby County Primary and Yawn.
But it’s easy to see where the two connect. Both artists stray towards the sincere and the sentimental in their lyricism, penning soft and sad odes to friends, exes and loved ones. They both make music to soundtrack big and difficult feelings, which is exactly how Parks first discovered the Merseyside musician.
When ELLE asked her what song got her through hard times, Parks replied, “‘Two to Birkenhead’ by Bill Ryder Jones.”
“An old friend played me this song. We were cycling through fields and took a break for a picnic under an oak tree. This is the first song she chose. The cicadas were buzzing, and the heat was making waves in the air. I remember hearing the lyric ‘Sitting on your hands well it kind of broke my heart. / It wasn’t in the plan when we went to Conway Park,’” she said.
Recalling the first moment she heard the heartbreak number, its vivid and relatable scene struck her most. “There was something so simple about the sentiment—I could picture a relationship dissolving, two people sitting beside each other on a bench saying goodbye.”
In her own music, Parks also seems interested in writing these in between moments. Capturing the point just before the big breakup, or just after the hard conversation, both artists are more interested in the complex emotions that surround it. On tracks like ‘Hurt’ and ‘Pegasus’, Parks dives deep into intimate and personal moments too.
‘Two to Birkenhead’ has stuck with the singer and writer as an enduring track, always there to be a companion in hard times. “I always listen to this song when I feel like things are falling apart a little bit,” she said in a perfectly apt evaluation as Ryder-Jones sings, “They say that desperate times / Call for desperate pleasures.”
