Twice Grammy-nominated, Mercury Prize and BRIT Award-winning artist Arlo Parks shares her first offering of 2022 with the new single "Softly," today. "Softly" presents a poppy and upbeat side to Arlo's smooth sound juxtaposed with her tender lyrics about a relationship fizzling. The song comes with a Zhang and Knight directed video, showing Arlo in an evocative picture perfect location that slowly unravels layer by layer, each stage more sparse and surreal.
Discussing the video, Zhang and Knight offered the following, "For us 'Softly' explored the idea of wanting something that was once perfect to end in a gentle way, and we wanted to express this using the world surrounding Arlo. We were instinctively drawn to the warm toned, hazy nostalgia of the 1960's, as we loved the idea of something universally romantic being slowly stripped away throughout the film. We based the colors of the bricks, trims and doors on mid-century painting in order to bake this romanticism into everything. The production itself was a huge challenge, as everything was captured in-camera with each piece of the set built on wheels operated by several production crew. However, we knew it was all worth it when we saw the skyscrapers dancing around Arlo for the first time."
Arlo shares about the single, "'Softly' is a song about yearning, about how fragile you feel in the dying days of a relationship when you’re still desperately in love. The song is about how it feels to brace yourself before the blow of a break up and reminisce about the days where it all felt luminous."
"Softly" arrives on the heels of a major 2021 for Arlo wherein she released her highly-praised debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams via Transgressive Records, received two Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and Best Alternative Music Album, won the BRIT Award for Best New Artist, received the Honda Mercury Prize, and won the BBC Introducing Artist Of The Year Award. Her debut album also reached the top 3 on the UK Album Charts and won the AIM Awards for Best Independent Album and UK Independent Breakthrough. On top of all this, Arlo was also nominated for Breakthrough International Act at the BET Awards and was named an ambassador for the British mental health charity, CALM.
Arlo Parks will be heading on tour with Clairo across North America beginning February 16th in Charlotte with stops in New York at Radio City Music Hall, Chicago at the Riviera Theatre and Los Angeles at the Greek Theatre, and ending with Coachella in April. "Softly" also follows the announcement that Arlo will be joining Harry Styles for his show in Dublin on June 22nd later this year.
Along with the towering awards garnered last year, Arlo's album was included on almost every 'Best Albums of 2021' list and received critical acclaim from the likes of The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The FADER and many more. Arlo performed singles from her debut album on Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, James Corden, CBS This Morning: Saturday, and Ellen DeGeneres in the US, spotlighting her in front of millions of viewers nationwide. She also appeared on Later...With Jools Holland and The Graham Norton Show in the UK. Her songwriting has seen her gain new fans in Billie Eilish, Florence Welch, Michelle Obama, Angel Olsen, Phoebe Bridgers, Massive Attack and renowned writer Zadie Smith, amongst many others.