"Growth, vulnerable, and truthful," are the three words Paris Paloma uses to (accurately) describe her debut album 'Cacophony'.
Released last week, 'Cacophony' features her monster single 'Labour' that hit over 1.5 million streams in its first 24 hours of release (it currently stands at 150M-plus Spotify streams and almost 30M YouTube views)."It's very much a body of work that describes the mental journey that I've been through in the last two to three years," shares Paris detailing the creative process behind 'Cacophony'.
"I'm 24 now and most of these songs were written sort of at the turning of me, becoming sort of a proper adult, and kind of working through a lot of things that happened in my teens and my adolescence that has just created a big mess in my mind.
"I really hope [listeners] feel held and validated and comforted, whether that's through that feeling of being held or through the catharsis and enabling them to feel, whether it's anger or grief or pain, I really hope they get it from this album.
"I think it's funny because the sort of growth in my confidence, obviously, has happened in tandem, both in my life and in my career; and you can kind of see the different trajectory of new ways of making music emerging as my world opens up, as my mind started to clear a little bit.
"You know, healing isn't linear as well, so it's still, like, a bit messy."
Working with various artists across the world, Paris and a team of producers and songwriters have produced an album that women across the world are already using to soundtrack their own experiences.
"I think that kind of spoke to this enabled vulnerability to write with other people, whereas I typically, I've always historically had quite a solitary writing process," Paris says. "I have Ben of Old Sea Brigade featuring on 'Yeti', which is the final song on the album. Ben was, like, 'my number one choice is to feature on that song'.
"His voice is so beautiful and was absolutely perfect. I try and make music in a vacuum, because the trouble with being a musician who's empathetic in the music they're making, I never want to start making music to fit a brief, to fit a quota for a receptive fan base. I think it's wonderful now, when I do make music it's very much inspired by the audience that I have.
"[However] it still feels like a leap of faith, having written this album and putting [the songs] out, because it's really for my benefit. It's quite selfishly an album written in order to gather all of my feelings and work through things that I needed to work through. Luckily, that's something a lot of people have resonated with."
Understanding how her creative works have influenced millions across the world, and especially how much her music has resonated with women of all kinds, Paris organised a variety of activities and events for fans worldwide arranged around the album's release last week.
"We've sort of got a guide for fans if they want to do really lovely things. There's also an event in Sydney at Pino and Picasso, as well as one in London at Morocco Bound Bookshop. It's more like a celebration, so all the fans can come together and do something to mark the release; the activities are inspired by the themes in the album."
With plenty of sold out shows and festivals across the US and Europe already under her belt as well as more European-UK shows between now and late November, Paloma has also toured alongside Maisie Peters and Stevie Nicks.
"I'm really keen to see people, once the album's out, singing along more. It feels very vulnerable playing songs that aren't released yet; and I have been doing it on my tour."
'Triassic Love Song' is currently featuring heavily on Paris' fans TikToks; she teases she's contemplating adding it to future set lists. "I kind of have this vision of people singing along very gently to that song in a completely acoustic setup at some point during my set, but that would be lovely – but you can't really ask people to learn a song before it's even out.
"I'm looking forward to more audience participation because I do have very active and wonderful audiences. I really hope you listen to it and enjoy it. I hope it's something that will be there for you, to hold you in all your feelings."
