FEATURE:
Spotlight
PHOTO CREDIT: Nicole Nodland for Billboard
describe as a major talent to watch, I have recently connected with the music of Paris Paloma. She is an amazing artist whose music instantly gripped me. So beautiful and evocative, her lyrics and mix of sounds means that you revisit her songs time and time again. One of the most talented and remarkable young songwriters in the U.K., here is someone that stands alongside the very best rising artists around. I think that there is a disproportionate amount of focus put on certain artists and genres. For singer-songwriters who maybe are not as bombastic or commercial, there tends not to be the same sort of exposure and spotlight. There is something more rewarding and deeper about the music of Paris Paloma than many of the young Pop acts emerging who are getting so much hype. Before getting to a couple of interviews with her, here is some information about the amazing Paris Paloma:
“UK singer songwriter Paris Paloma channels the experience of womanhood into her songwriting, speaking to the female experience, grief, love, death, and power. Her songwriting reads like poetry, drawing inspiration from figures throughout mythology, art history and the Romantics. Ranging from the tender and heartbreaking to the sublimely aggressive and vengeful. Her ethereal sound takes influences from dark pop, folk, and indie genres; creating a magical discography that evokes something primal and innately feminine”.
In fact, doing a bit of searching, there are a few interviews that spring to mind. A couple based around her powerful and incredible song, labour. That came out last March. Issuu chatted with Paris Paloma about a song that addresses and calls out how women, across society, are underpaid. Made to do all this labour without compensation. Whilst you can relate it to industries and domestic duties, one can also apply it to the creative arts. Even now, with small steps being made, there is still a huge issue. A song like labour is vital and eye-opening:
“Labour" by Paris Paloma is a powerful song that speaks to the experience of female rage. The lyrics are a raw expression of the anger and frustration that many women feel in a world that coerces them into performing uncompensated labour in the private sphere, without even being credited. It's an ode to mothers, daughters and wives.
The song is especially relatable to Middle Eastern and South Asian women, who are pressured into performing excessive domestic and emotional labour, even when they are working the same hours as their male peers outside their homes.
Yet women are socialized into being subservient and doing it without complaining. It’s essentially viewed as an integral part of womanhood, of femininity. Paris challenges this archaic idea in “Labour”, embracing and channeling the rage of generations of women around the world. The song is a stirring anthem for women who have felt burdened by this gendered labour, and a call to action for a world that still has a long way to go.
Q. How do you feel when you see all the TikTok videos that use your song?
Paris: I feel incredibly grateful that this song has become a lot bigger than me because it's a shared experience of so many women and girls. This stuff starts at such a young age where we are presented as being caregivers in a household. I feel incredibly grateful that it has been taken by so many women who share the same feelings I have been having. I just wrote this song because I was frustrated and angry with how I felt as a woman and I think those feelings can be so isolating. When all of these women are taking in this song and using it to make these amazing trends off of it, it makes us all less alone in our quite rightful anger about the way we are being treated.
Q. That is so right. It’s like a community that we have built as women and it feels much less lonely. I would like to go to the very beginning, when did you think you wanted to pursue this career, and what inspired you? Where did this all start? Paris: I think something about being heard is particularly what appealed to me in songwriting. I have written songs since I was very young. They were terrible back then obviously, because I was really young.
Paris: I definitely think there is so much more room for women in the industry. I think in the creative industry, and in other industries, it’s so often viewed as a tick box thing where if a set amount of things are done to include women or other demographics, people put their thumbs up and think, ‘Great, now it’s inclusive and we have solved the problem!” But it’s not solved because obviously there is still so much room for them to be more included. Personally, I have been really lucky because I’ve not had any exploitative experiences. One of the things that prompted me to start going public with my music was the month-long women’s only music mentorship program I had during the pandemic. It was remote and it was run by HyperDrive. They are doing great work and they run a mentorship program for women in music where you get paired with another woman in the industry who mentors you.
I had Chloe Diana who is an amazing singer from Essex and she taught me about the industry. The whole point is that these women are teaching fellow female singers how the industry works and helping us help each other so that we don’t get exploited. Things like distributors and releasing music and gigs and streaming platforms, I didn't know any of this before because the knowledge really isn’t that accessible. So this set me up to have amazing luck with the people I worked with.
When I made Labour, it was my first time in a studio, ever. I had recorded music before but it was always in my own or someone else’s bedroom, even though I worked with very talented producers. It was my first time in a studio and I worked with Justin Glasgow. He also did NotreDame which came out- earlier this year. He is just the safest, kindest and nicest person. He also works with Annabelle Lee who is one of the backing vocalists in Labour and she makes these amazing rare tracks. For that reason, I knew that he was a safe figure and such a great ally for raging feminist music. In that way, I feel really lucky but I know that not everyone has such an inclusive experience of the music industry. In spite of that, I can still recognize that there is still so much that needs to be done to make women feel like they have a seat at the table”.
I want to stay with labour. One of the most extraordinary and moving songs of last year, it is no surprise that there was a lot of interest around it. People wanting to speak with Paris Paloma about the song and what it means. How it has resonated with people. NME featured her in May. It is amazing – though not surprising – how popular labour is. How it has been embraced by people:
“The bridge of Paris Paloma’s ‘Labour’ is a moment of true catharsis. Depicting a tale of a woman that has been forced into taking on all the emotional labour in a relationship, the folk-pop tune slowly unravels over gossamer instrumentals, before erupting into a powerful chant: “All day, every day, therapist, mother, maid / Nymph, then a virgin, nurse, then a servant”. By the time we reach the peak of the chorus – “It’s not an act of love if you make her / You make me do too much labour,” Paloma repeats – the song has asserted itself as a genuine rallying cry.
‘Labour’ has evolved into a bonafide hit: it recently reached the Top 30 in the UK charts, has racked up over 35 million streams on Spotify alone, and soundtracked over 40,000 TikTok videos. “It’s become something that’s a lot bigger than me,” Paloma says of the track’s continued success. The Derbyshire-born artist is Zooming in from a family weekend away in Cheltenham, chatting to NME on a sun-drenched Friday afternoon. “That’s one of the highest honours as a songwriter that you could have happen with a song; because as a person, you’re quite small, but songs can become very big.”
She’s not wrong. ‘Labour’ has struck a chord with with TikTok users, with the song’s audio allowing them to convey their own personal stories of misogyny. “I was watching a video before this interview, from this girl who was talking so beautifully about ‘Labour’ and how she felt it really applied to the misogyny that she’d seen in Desi culture,” Paloma says. “It is so powerful to me that people have applied such personal experiences to the track. It’s been this vehicle for women, and people of all sorts of areas, to resonate with the topic.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Jennifer McCord
How have you coped with the success of the track?
“I think as an artist there’s defining moments in your career, and sometimes it’s difficult to notice them when they’re happening. Most of the time it’s retrospective; but I know this is a really pivotal point in my music career and my relationship with my listenership, and that’s amazing. I feel very lucky to be aware of it as it’s happening.”
When people listen to your music, how do you want them to feel?
“I think I want them to feel heard, or held, and whether they’re listening to something like ‘Labour’ and it’s something so angry, I want them to feel like their anger is valid. If it’s something else, I want them to feel comforted, if it makes them cry I want them to feel held while they do that. I hope that my music can serve as a vehicle for a protective sphere in which to feel any emotions that need to be felt”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Nicole Nodland for Billboard
Not to entirely base this feature to one song – as she has released other tremendous and equally brilliant songs -, though there is one more interview I want to come to before I move on and wrap up. Billboard heralded the meaning and importance of labour and how it has resonated with women and men alike. Even though it has been out almost a year, it is still enormously relevant and so powerful and moving every time you hear it:
“Those early signs proved right on the money when the full song was released through Nettwerk in March, drawing not only millions of streams but countless responses on TikTok from fans who found the themes to be resonant — and not just from women. “I’ve got several messages from men who’ve realized [from the song] that they should be doing better in relationships,” Paloma says. “That’s amazing. Because I keep getting asked, ‘What can we do to solve this?’ And it’s not up to women: That’s the whole point. It’s up to men to listen and to take action.”
Through the success of “Labour” and Paloma’s other songs, she has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok. But Fernandez is insistent that neither he nor Paloma want her to be seen as a “TikTok artist” — which is part of the reason they declined to release sped-up or slowed-down versions of “Labour,” instead opting to record a totally reimagined, more orchestral version of the song with production duo MyRiot that’s dropping soon. “It’s just not falling into that trap of, ‘Let’s copy what everyone is doing right now,’ ” Fernandez says. “Let’s try to forge our own way. And if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”
Paloma is now getting ready to play some live shows at 300- to 500-capacity spaces in London and upcoming festival dates at Summerfest and Bonnaroo. She’s also beginning to think about a debut album, which Fernandez says fans can most likely expect in July or August. By then, it will have been about a year since she wrote “Labour.”
“It’s already been a lot of time in between,” she says. “In that time, I’ve written a lot newer music, which — not to say that it’s better, but you always think that your most recent stuff is the best because it’s the most accurate reflection of where your creativity is. I’ve got so much work I want to get out”.
I will end up with DORK. In October, they spoke with an artist who was all about women coming together. The Derbyshire songwriter and artist has been blown away by the success of her music and how songs like labour have taken off. Paris Paloma was looking ahead to her first tour dates outside of the U.K. I am fascinated to see what is coming next from this astonishing artist:
“Paris always knew she wanted to tell stories with her music. Big, meaningful and powerful stories. “The music I started listening to in my teens was very lyrics focused. When I was little, my dream was to be a creative writer,” she says. “I’d write stories all the time, and at some point, those stories started becoming poems, and those poems became songs. That transition happened out of influences in literature as opposed to influences in music.”
The formative music of her childhood was the soul and jazz her mum would play, but for Paris, she naturally gravitated to people who liked to play with words and language, whether florid and wordy or incredibly pure and simple. “When I was 12, I started looking up to songwriters like Ed Sheeran and people I thought were really using words and telling stories,” she remembers. “Following on from that, people like Florence + The Machine and Hozier, people who I really look up to and who use their words in such a considered way. That massively influences me.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Jennifer McCord
As she started making more and more songs, Paris’s songwriting began to evolve. “I’ve become a lot more considered,” she reflects. “I’ve got to a point where I understand that it’s ok not to say everything. The main driver for my music when I started was catharsis and feeling heard. It was an emotional outlet to use whatever it was that was incredibly difficult to go through, pain and grief and struggles with power in my own life and the strife of growing up as a girl. It’s made me feel that I can be considered in what I want to share and how I want to share it. You just have to be giving something genuine. I think I’ve decentred myself a lot more than when I was writing bedroom songs about my feelings on things I’m going through. I’m still staying true to that but not beating myself up when I want to keep some things.”
She now sees her songwriting as a true body of work which allows her to focus on each song as a part of a world she’s creating. “I think of my songs informing each other now rather than being specific,” she says. “It’s now this considered thing which all have relationships to each other and inform each other. My next songs stand on the shoulders of my previous songs.”
Indeed, her next single, ‘As Good A Reason’, carries on some of the big themes of ‘Labour’ but from a slightly different perspective. More triumphant and defiant and with a rollicking groove to it. “I wanted to write a song about the power of women learning from each other,” she explains. “There were lots of things I was thinking about in terms of misogyny being eradicated through the generations, and that’s happening because of work that women are doing. It’s happening because of women of older generations giving space to women of younger generations to see how peaceful their life can be when decentering patriarchy.”
It’s clear that Paris is an incredibly passionate and thoughtful songwriter who thinks carefully about what she wants to say and recognises the impact and engaging quality of her words. “I was thinking a lot about ageism and misogyny and this fear of being an older woman or any type of woman that doesn’t correlate with patriarchy’s idea of what women should be,” she continues. “Also, the manufacturing of insecurity in women and the trends in body types and all of this exhausting stuff which women are really only realising is obsolete through talking to each other and seeing other women who are living as outside of it as they possibly can and seeing how peaceful that is.”
‘As Good A Reason’ is a song with a different kind of energy to ‘Labour’ but no less inspiring. “I wanted to write a joyful song,” she smiles. “It was written prior to ‘Labour’. Female rage is an incredible thing, but it can also feel like it’s not for everyone, and I don’t want to reduce the meaning of being a woman to our capacity for pain and anger. ‘As Good A Reason’ speaks to your reasons for doing things and your reasons for self love. The idea that if self-love is too difficult for the sake of oneself if you are a woman living under this patriarchy that is manufacturing insecurities and telling you that you have to do things to be loved. Loving yourself out of spite for those who would profit out of you doing the opposite is as good a reason in the interim while you’re learning to do it just for yourself.”
For the rest of the year, Paris is getting on with the important business of being a pop star. “I’ve got my first European tour in September,” she beams. “I’ve never played outside the UK before. It’s going to be incredible to get over to see a whole new space of people who’ve been listening to my music.” And is there anything else planned for the rest of the year? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. There’s definitely a whole lot more music coming,” she teases. Engaging with meaningful conversations and making music that resonates across generations, Paris Paloma is full of ambition and confidence, ready to tell her stories to a mass audience”.
Follow the brilliant Paris Paloma. I started by mentioning how there was a divide between commercial/TikTok Pop artists and deeper or different artists like Paris Paloma. That may sound snobby. What I mean is that songs that have a particular energy and sound are seen as more desirable and worthy as other types of music – that might be more impactful and important. Even if Paris Paloma has got a load of fans and is a popular artists, you feel like her music warrants a bigger platform and the same sort of kudos reserved for the largest Pop artists in the mainstream. Let’s hope this happens this year, as she is an artist to behold and cherish. Once you hear her phenomenal music, it will…
STAY with you forever.
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