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Premiering last night as Annie Mac’s ‘Hottest Record’, today Arlo Parks has delivered her latest sonic offering; the beguiling ‘Black Dog‘, a song she describes as being about “the feeling of helplessness that comes along with watching a loved one suffer.” Out today via Transgressive, you can also watch the emotionally charged accompanying video clip, directed by long time collaborator Molly Burdett – check it out via the link below.
Further discussing the meaning behind the track, the ever poignant Arlo explains “it’s supposed to make people who are struggling feel less isolated and start a conversation surrounding the prevalence of mental health issues in today’s world.” Particularly fitting, given she has just become an ambassador for CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably).
‘Black Dog‘ is the follow up to recent single ‘Eugene‘, which was released earlier this year alongside a video directed by Loyle Carner and his brother Ryan (The Coyle-Larner Brothers) and follows her run of sold out European and UK headline shows. The song has been her most successful to date, amassing 5,000,000 streams and featuring on the BBC Radio 1 playlist.
Prior to the year’s new music releases, Arlo ended 2019 with a compilation of her singles to date titled Super Sad Generation, and was included in a multitude of tips for 2020 (she was featured in the coveted BBC Sound Poll, as well as receiving the backing of NME, DIY, Dazed, Hunger, Ga y Times, Evening Standard, Metro, Dork, VEVO and many more). It rounded off a phenomenal twelve months for the young musician/poet, who released her debut single ‘Cola‘ at the start of 2019 and subsequently headlined her first London show, played to a packed out crowd at Glastonbury (where she was also invited to perform live on BBC television), debuted her live offering across Europe, and embarked on two support tours with Loyle Carner & Jordan Rakei.
More recently, whilst in Paris, Arlo covered Patti Smith’s ‘Redondo Beach‘ for La Blogotheque – watch that and her being interviewed about punk music here. Whilst also featuring alongside Dave from Glass Animals for a live cover version of Drake single, ‘Hotline Bling’.