Too Good- Arlo Parks

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another blog post. Today I will be discussing singer-songwriter Arlo Parks. I've wanted to write about Arlo for a couple of weeks now but had other artists already planned. I first heard of Arlo at the 2022 Grammy Awards. She was nominated for best new artist, and I listened to a snippet of her songs. I instantly fell in love with her music. Arlo's full name is Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho, but she chose her stage name as a pseudonym inspired by Frank Ocean and King Krule. Born and raised in Hammersmith, West London, Arlo is half Nigerian, a quarter Chadian, and a quarter French. Her mother was born in France, and Arlo grew up learning to speak French first before she could speak English. Arlo also writes poetry which makes her music more unique. In school, Arlo said she felt like an outsider because of the music she listened to and because she was coming out as bisexual.

Arlo first made it into the music scene in 2018 when she started sending her music to BBC Music Introducing. This radio show supports unsigned and undiscovered artists sharing their music. This caught the attention of Ali Raymond, a manager for Beatnik Creative who started managing Arlo. In November of 2018, Arlo released her first single called Cola and released her first EP, Super Sad Generation, the following year. On Wikipedia, it says that Arlo then signed with Transgressive Records after her first single. But, her discography states that she released several more singles and an EP under Beatnik. Either way, in 2020, Arlo started releasing singles under Transgressive, and in 2021 released her first studio album, Collapse In Sunbeams. Arlo has received awards like the AIM Independent Music Award, the Breakthrough Artist Award, and the Hyundai Mercury Award for album of the year.

Today I will be discussing Arlo's song Too Good off of her recent album. Too Good was written by Arlo and Gianluca Buccellati, also known as Luca, and produced by Luca. The song starts with a filter that makes the music sound like it is being played on a turntable, singing, "Why do we make the simplest things so hard." The filter is removed, and the bass cuts in with a percussion beat and electric guitar. Arlo's voice sounds so soft and smooth it will melt you like butter. Her lyrics are also to die for, "I bought you breakfast, and you stared at your rings. The air was fragrant and thick with our silence. I held my breath as something deep inside pinched. I touched the bump on your wrist you were born with." These lyrics have so much imagery. They have that poetry vibe, but Arlo still makes it sound commercial. The song then goes into the pre-chorus, then the chorus, "I think you know it, too cool to show it. Babe, it's all good. You're too good to be true." This part gets me. Arlo has vocal harmony in the background that gives me shivers. I could listen to this chorus on repeat. In the second verse, Arlo brings us some more poetry, "I let my pain out through the way that I sit and start to pick at the rips of my Nikes. You quote Thom Yorke and lean in for a quick kiss, but you still won't admit that you like me." Listening to these lyrics shows me how much I can step up my lyric writing game. But I think that's so great about Arlo, this is a reflection of how she thinks, and it's so beautiful and complex. Not a lot of people phrase words this way, but Arlo does. Check out Arlo's song in the link below, and let me know who you would like to see next for Lydia's New Girls.

Lydia’s Girls Blog Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6ETYI6A3dsOe9fJTBQVWg8?si=112b3509cf544c16