Quotes from Arlo Parks

When I was seven, I sang 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow' in assembly and the teachers were crying because it was so emotional!

I went to see my first gig when I was 15 - it was Loyle Carner at Shepherd's Bush - and I remember just feeling the bass in my feet and in my body. I was so energised.

I realised that being sensitive means you can connect to all kinds of people. I think I've learned that it is a gift as well.

I realised that what I loved was descriptive writing rather than something with a plot.

I wanted to really delve into the idea of reckoning with difficult things in one's past - and celebrating the joyful things, and honoring the stories that have made me who I am.

I usually just write a song and record it that day, and then that's kind of it. I'm not very good at going back and editing and tinkering it. It's pretty immediate.

When I was younger, music really saved me, and felt like a refuge for me when I was in quite a lost space. I just want to talk to people, and I guess in a way, feel understood myself.

When things started to take off, I had more and more to do, and things were happening but I didn't quite have the time to process it or enjoy the positives and think about how far I've come.

It's got to be speciality coffee or nothing. I love posh coffee but I have lattes with sugar, so I'm not a purist at all, but it has to be specific or it's just not worth it to me.

I picked up the guitar when I was about 14 or 15 maybe, and then I started just messing around with loops on GarageBand, and just building my own beats in my bedroom and then just releasing that on SoundCloud.

When you start doing music as your job and there are so many peripheral things around it, it's great to have a reminder to focus on what is good for myself, my body, my health and my work.

Reading the dictionary helps me express myself better. I can spend hours flicking through a thesaurus, too. It's not about expanding my vocabulary, it's just that I have a very specific taste with words. I'll sit and write lists of them to help me better describe my life.

I'm very extroverted - I'm really social. People have a sense I'm a reserved wallflower, but that's not who I am. My music is inward-looking, and that is a part of me, but I like having a laugh.

I make sure to sit down for at least five minutes a day to just capture whatever passes through my mind.

Know that you can move past things that have happened to you and that healing takes time. Take the lessons you learned in the past and hold them close, but move forward and try not to get trapped in what was.

I had someone tell me recently that Black Dog had started this important conversation about mental health that had saved their marriage. It's really quite mad how these songs have travelled.

How many artists to pick as my obsessions? The four I listen to all the time are Phoebe Bridgers, A Tribe Called Quest - I'm being very selective, here - and then probably the Cure, still; and then The Internet - I love The Internet.

I learned a lot of empathy and openness from my parents. I know so many people who don't have that experience.

I'm just trusting my intuition and my taste and writing it quickly - I'm glad people are gravitating towards feelings.

My dad loved jazz, so there was a little Miles Davis, Otis Redding, Donny Hathaway. My mum is French, so she'd listen to a lot of French music, but a lot of the music that actually formed my taste, I just found online.

Some days I paint and write and meditate, but some days I just sit about with zero motivation. I think that's natural though.

I feel like people who are older have lived longer and it's harder to impress them. So I always feel super flattered when I see an older couple at my show. I'm like, okay, I must be doing something special.

My dad was into jazz, so there was a lot of Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington playing in the house, but also a lot of soul, such as Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald, while my mum liked Prince and Diana Ross.

It sounds cheesy to say it, but I think my motivation has always been to help others.