Mercury victor's sugar-spun musings on the pop eternal
The Independent|May 26, 2023
On her second album, Arlo Parks finds inspiration in love, with sometimes surprising results
Annabel Nugent
Mercury victor's sugar-spun musings on the pop eternal

Admittedly, “voice of a generation” is an epithet that gets thrown around a lot, but when Arlo Parks released Collapsed in Sunbeams in 2021, it felt apt. The album was praised for its diaristic lyrics, which cleaved closer to poetry than pop music, and her soft but acute observations of the rising mental health crisis among Gen Z resonated with listeners who were tuning in mid-pandemic. London-born Parks won the Mercury Prize for her debut effort and now lives in sunny LA with her girlfriend, the blue-haired, alt-pop rapper Ashnikko, whom one can only guess had a lot to do with Parks’s new record.

This story is from the May 26, 2023 edition of The Independent.

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This story is from the May 26, 2023 edition of The Independent.

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