“I love world building, and at some point my storytelling started taking the form of songs.”
All musicians are called “artists” these days, even when they’re very much not. Paris Paloma, on the other hand, really is an artist — and not simply because she has a degree in fine art from Goldsmiths and paints all of her record artwork. It’s because her work is a serious immersion in her craft. Much like Kate Bush or Joanna Newsom or one of her direct inspirations, Bon Iver, there’s lore in her folk, a world to uncover.
All of this has given this 25-year-old, originally from Derbyshire, a dedicated cult following. Her fans call themselves “fairies” and dance in circles at her shows. Sounds spooky but it’s simple enough from Paloma’s point of view: “I feel very held and heard by them, and I think I make them feel held in some capacity.”
Yet this isn’t mere fans-only fun. Paloma’s debut album, Cacophony, is packed with beautiful songs that tackle love and grief and trauma, and which seem to have lives of their own, such as the viral hit Labour. A song about the emotional and physical labour women have to take on in relationships, it was a personal “self-soothing” song but it struck a huge chord, and led her to perform on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in the States.
“No one can predict something like that,” she says. “I was stunned there was this huge moment around that song, one which continues. It’s very bittersweet with Labour because people are understanding the resonance of that song in this tidal wave of misogyny, this global pandemic of violence against women. It’s a song that speaks to the exploitation of women, to the oppression of women.”
And this is where the huge connection is coming from. Yes, there’s a fantasy world to escape into, but it’s built on real-world problems — and the combination is powering Paloma into one of the strongest new voices in music.
“Songwriting’s predominant purpose for me is coming from a need to be heard on something, and I just think when you’re a woman, so much of your life feels like you’re screaming at a brick wall,” she says.
“Then you have this realisation that you’re not being answered not because people can’t hear you, but because they don’t care … there’s this expectation for women to fulfill all of these roles, in a nurturing sense, in a sexual sense, in an emotional sense, and also educate the men that they are with in order to treat them like human beings.”
Next for Paloma is a slot at Glastonbury — “a rite of passage” — and beyond that you fully expect her to change the world.
Paris Paloma’s album Cacophony is out now