“My friends and I will be having a wonderful moment—sunset, driving back from Malibu—and they’re like, we all know you’re going to write a song about this. I’m always taking note, observing, and writing down little fragments. It’s a desire to immortalize the moment, and I have that at all times.

-Arlo Parks, episode 332 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Today, we sit with singer-songwriter Arlo Parks! At the top, we discuss the arrival of her new record My Soft Machine (4:26), how performing with Harry Styles and Billie Eilish transformed her work in the studio (7:08), and the vivid memory behind her new song “Devotion” (9:50). Then, we talk about her intuitive writing process (11:26), fueled by an affinity for poetry (13:39), and the influences behind her earliest pieces of music (20:05).

On the back-half, Parks describes the winding path to her debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams (30:12), this profound chapter turn from the first to second record (39:07), returning to her “fifteen minutes of presence” as a writer (41:40), her striking new song “Puppy” (42:17), and her ever-evolving relationship to capturing the past (44:12).

Show-notes:

Illustrations by: Krishna ShenoiReference image by Alex Waespi.

Subscribe, rate, and review: Apple Podcasts and Spotify.