Arlo Parks was raised in West London, and while still a teenager, released her first single in 2018 and caught the attention of the BBC. Soon a pair of EP’s arrived in 2019 – Super Sad Generation, followed by the EP Sophie. The accolades and press was nearly immediate. Arlo Parks was longlisted as a Breakthrough Act of 2020, and before the end of that year, she was gracing the cover of NME, and won the AIM Independent Music Award for One to Watch. When we last had Arlo Parks on SHEROES, she had just released her hotly anticipated full length debut, Collapsed In Sunbeams, and as predicted, the album catapulted her career – receiving not only critical acclaim but some of the biggest awards and nominations of the industry, winning the coveted Mercury Prize for Album of the Year, three BRIT Award nominations and one win for Best New Artist, and two Grammy nominations. Keep in mind this all happened during some of the worst times of the pandemic, when touring had pretty much come to a standstill. Fast forward to the present – May 2023, and Arlo Parks is back with a brand new album called My Soft Machine. And this time she is a big star. I caught up with her a few weeks prior to release, and now that it is here, we celebrate its arrival by welcoming back Arlo Parks as this week’s SHERO in the Spotlight.
