As she watched friends skim stones on Brighton Beach, Paris Paloma felt energy shift. Like heat returning to numb fingertips, life felt like it was taking shape again after a long period of personal trauma. With a diaphanous sheath of lyrics in mind, she went to Bergen, Norway to work on new music. On the three days of the year that it didn’t rain in Europe’s wettest city, among the silvery lakes and mountain peaks, life grew ever brighter. “the warmth” was formed. “I ate up all the light, it shone through my teeth, I tasted sunbeams emanating from me… it can’t hurt me… now the warmth is returning,” she sings in unfurling harmonies, spectral with full-bodied pop, a determined percussive march building like a personal artillery. This emotional arc would be core to Paris Paloma’s debut album, cacophony. The Derbyshire-born musician gave the world “labour” in 2023. It was the first song she’d ever fully recorded in a proper studio – early releases like “narcissus” in 2020, 2021 EP cemeteries and socials, and 2023’s “notre dame” were produced in her own bedroom or others’. But early clips she posted with stolen lyrics of “labour” to TikTok had already garnered a curious audience. Its journal-like lyricism and incisive strain of compelling, dark folk-pop skewered the knots of women’s emotional labour, and it immediately became a rallying cry worldwide upon official release. The Gold-certified track has broken over 450 million streams, cracked the Official UK Singles Chart and US Billboard Chart, and soundtracked tens of thousands of TikToks. It spurred on sold-out shows around the UK, and Paris, armed with a compact slew of songs, travelled to the US and Australia for the festival circuit. “I matured because of ‘labour’,” Paris explains. “As a young artist you’re both protected and limited – you’re putting songs that are so intimate into a void. It’s made me more considerate about how vulnerable these songs are going to be.” Such vulnerability can be difficult to confront, and all the more to articulate as art, “but I feel very held by my listeners,” Paris says. This symbiotic care between artist and listener is innate within Paris’s devoted fanbase. She’s cultivated a community both online and off: on TikTok, her 1.4M followers send her videos (of thoughts, song snippets, and tour moments) into six-figure views. Fan-made art and videos analysing her lyrics span social media. She also crowdsourced the voices of hundreds of fans for a new version of “labour” in “labour (the cacophony)”. These are roots laid deep, as Paris gains wider recognition from British Vogue to NME to Billboard, as YouTube’s Trending Artist on the Rise and a Breakthrough Artist to Watch 2024 by Amazon. She also performed an intimate version of “labour” on Later... with Jools Holland and most recently, a powerful performance on Late Night with Stephen Colbert with backing vocals from The Resistance Revival Chorus and a set inspired by Judy Chicago’s iconic feminist art installation, The Dinner Party (the viral performance is currently at over 14M views on TikTok). A graduate of fine art from Goldsmiths University (her first tattoo was a tribute to female surrealist artist Ithell Colquhoun), Paris’s creative mediums have influenced each other since she first started writing songs at age 14. Her early releases’ visual identities are crafted from her own fantasy drawings. Now, cacophony is inspired by the creation that comes out of chaos – in 15 tracks, we’re shown Paris as an evocative lyricist who constellates human experiences of grief, love, patriarchy, and trauma with Greek mythology, fantasy, and the literary gothic. The album name is inspired by Stephen Fry’s Mythos, ruminating on the creation myth. “Fromthis chaotic cosmic yawn, creation sprang forth,” Paris explains, “so this is a collection that makes sense of the overwhelming space of my mind where my anxiety, my OCD, and trauma processing lives.” Songwriting is a catharsis and coping mechanism, which she uses to articulate her struggles in real time. The sprawling metaphor of chaos to creation knits the album’s universe together. She matches this with expansive productions – dramatic instrumentation, folk sensibilities, pop at its most cavernous. It makes sense for someone who first picked up a guitar at age 13, enamoured by Ed Sheeran, Bon Iver, and the eclectic sounds of her upbringing from the Motown and jazz her mother played. “my mind (now)” was especially fun to build. Paris recalls: “I didn’t want any structure that could be a ‘life raft’. It has to almost overwhelm you, then pull back. You're a tiny raft in the ocean, you're surely going to go under – but you don't.” After building a song out on vocals and guitar, her notes app and songbook, she makes a playlist to convey the sonic palette. “as good a reason” was inspired by Alt-J and early Hozier; “labour” from Glass Animals and Katarina Gimon’s compositions. “I don't know what genre I am. I don’t give it much thought. The second I do, I'll start limiting myself.” The album spans the breadth of Paris’s vocal range. “my mind (now)” is the first time she’s screamed on record. On “his land” – a melancholic offering about isolation, inspired by the reduction of British public lands – she reaches her lowest tone. In the “last woman on earth” bridge, she belts her highest. “It was really hard to get up there. My songs, age 20, were mumbly and soft. In part it was a tone thing, and in part confidence. Now I write songs and push myself to grow toward it, as opposed to making everything sound the same.” Worldbuilding is cinched by visual aesthetic – Paris gravitates towards the eerie feminine fashion of Bora Aksu and Simone Rocha and is styled for stage by Leith Clark. If each song could have a music video, she would. The striking visual for “my mind (now)”, directed by Matt Grass, is darkly fantastical. “I want everyone to see my musical world as I do,” she says. Live performance is vital to her artistry, and Paris has sold out four headline London shows. At every gig, her lyrics are sung directly back at her. “One of the reasons you write is to feel heard,” she says. “It's an audience that wants to know more.” The intimacy of the music remains steadfast as stages get bigger. Over the last year, she has supported Stevie Nicks in London at BST Hyde Park, embarked on festival season, including shows at Glastonbury and Reading Festival, and sold-out multiple UK, US and European tours. She has just completed a sold-out North American tour and is set to grace stages again this summer for her biggest sold-out UK dates yet. cacophony is “a stage backdrop”, against which all future music will be positioned. “I’ve chronically released singles and been quite nomadic. I’m excited to set the scene for my world.” She’s already working on the threads of her next album, a Paris Paloma tapestry in motion.
