Arlo Parks Artistfacts

August 9, 2000
Her real name is Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho. She was born in Paris to a Nigerian father and a Chadian-French mother, and grew up in Hammersmith, West London. Because her mother was born in Paris, she learned to speak French before she learned English.
Arlo Parks started writing songs in her bedroom in her early teens, having been inspired by the jazz records her dad played at home.
She came up with her stage name on a night out with friends. Inspired by King Krule - whose name came from imagining a king crawling through a city at his lowest point - she thought "Low... Arlo."

She wanted a two-part name, like Frank Ocean, and was stressing about finding the second part when her friends told her to relax because they were in the park. "Parks" came to her instantly.
Arlo Parks first performed live at around 16 at The Basement Door, a venue in Richmond popular with aspiring musicians from West London.

"We were just kids, there was no sound check, no-one knew what they were doing, I didn't know what reverb was, I didn't know what anything was. I would just turn up and just sing and I think those kind of gigs where you just asked few friends down there and there are ten people in the room and just making those first few steps," she told BBC Introducing. "It is quite a jump, you write songs in the private space of your own home… writing is one process and then actually being in front of people and performing and having to engage an audience was something that takes practice."
Arlo Parks wrote all the lyrics to her breakthrough song "Super Sad Generation" on the back of a napkin when she was 17, after a party. The song went on to become the title track of her debut EP in 2019.
Her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams (2021), won the Mercury Prize and earned her the Best New Artist award at the Brit Awards. It was also nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 64th Grammy Awards and peaked at #3 on the UK Albums Chart.
Parks co-wrote "Ya Ya" for Beyoncé's 2024 album Cowboy Carter, describing it to The Independent as "a massive, beautiful surprise" to find the song made the cut. She had wanted to write songs for other artists "for a long time" and approached the track by trying to create something she thought Beyoncé "would sound sick on."
Parks is openly bisexual and has spoken about the importance of visibility, particularly as a Black woman in music. She wants to be the kind of LGBTQ role model she didn't always see growing up.
Her 2020 single "Black Dog" was partly inspired by her own experiences with mental health and depression, reflecting the empathy and emotional honesty that run through much of her work.
She became UNICEF UK's youngest ever ambassador in 2024, deepening her longstanding commitment to mental health advocacy. Parks had already been working with the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), a London-based charity focused on suicide prevention, since around the time "Black Dog" was released.
Parks is widely known among crossword puzzle enthusiasts because "arlo" is a common answer. Before her rise, these clues usually referred to Arlo Guthrie, the folk singer who had a hit in 1972 with "City Of New Orleans." They might also reference Arlo the dinosaur in the 2015 Pixar movie The Good Dinosaur.

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