Name 3 Songs: Growing up you wanted to be a creative writer and that found its way into songwriting and music. And from us listening to your music, looking at your visuals, it’s very clear that literature and art greatly impacts the art you create. How do you draw inspiration for the visual side of your artistry and how does fine art play an important role in this?

Paris Paloma: I’m just a really visual person, always have been. I studied fine art and history of art throughout my teens and at university. And for me, it’s always been a really important vehicle of storytelling. I like to really visualise the songs I’m writing and I like to build that world and kind of describe it for the listener.

So it kind of feels like what I’m doing isn’t solely audio based. It’s writing a scene or a world or a character in the same way that you would in a novel. It’s not something I consciously do, to be honest. I think it’s just kind of the way my brain works.

Obviously history of art, whether it’s mythology or literature, they all have a massive part to play in why I write the way that I do. Sometimes there’s inspiration for the kind of imagery I want to be using. And also sometimes it’s really nice to use those tropes, those storytelling devices to talk about your own life and kind of shroud it in that layer of mystery and mythos. I think it makes me feel quite protected so that songs don’t become kind of anecdotal or like pieces of trivia about my life.

I think this is beautiful. We’re going to dig into this a lot during this conversation, but I saw in an interview with NME you said you feel a different type of connection when you’re performing. And that there’s a different energy that flows between somebody observing fine art, which can be quite a solo activity, and a live performance where it’s a lot of people coming together to kind of celebrate and share in the practice of art almost. It’s like a really interesting, beautiful sentiment. For you, what is your impression of fine art, which can be not as accessible if you don’t have that knowledge base, versus music being something that’s quite relatable?

I really felt that going to art shows, art exhibitions, and a lot of them, you know, really amazing and from the work of my friends and fellow artists who I really respect and admire. But yeah, it’s down to each person, you know. I think the reason I gravitated towards this very direct form of art in the form of storytelling, songwriting feels to me like a conversation. It feels so accessible. 

And I was just talking [about this] the other day – I started songwriting at a point where there were lots of songwriters who I was falling in love with. And the difference between them and everyone else is that they made being a musician seem really accessible. Like people like Ed Sheeran or Joni Mitchell. And something that Ed Sheeran did at the time was just absolutely make songwriting [seem accessible], you know, he was working with nothing but sort of talent in his words. 

And I kind of was really inspired by that. I think there’s a lot of weight in both fine art and music. But it does manifest really differently. And I think I felt that lack of accessibility sometimes in fine art, but I don’t think that that’s blanket everywhere because I’m obviously a massive fan of fine art and many artists who I adore and respect and do have really genuine emotional reactions to. I think it just wasn’t the vehicle I ended up wanting in order to feel heard in the kind of art that I was trying to put across.

Yeah, and there is something so special about the act of a live performance where there is the energy exchange. Jenna and I both do photography and it’s in a similar vein where you take a photo of a moment of energy and you freeze that and then you put it somewhere where people can feel something while looking at it. But you don’t have that moment with them, whereas on stage you do get to have that moment. 

Yeah, I sort of dabbled in performance art as well whilst I was at university. And back when I was studying history of art, even before I went to uni, the people that I fell in love with, Marina Abramovic or Yoko Ono, when these feminist trailblazers of performance art and the immediacy and how it felt so profound to me – sharing space with the audience in that way. 

And I think there’s something really special about being a musician. It comes from that traditional performance, but is entirely different in that everyone has their own audience. I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, everyone has their own audience and audiences are different depending on the artist. And I feel so lucky to have such a such nichely wonderful audience.

And also because it’s fairly new, they’re all getting to know each other, you know, in the way that you look at other artists and you know what their audience would be like, you know what a Taylor Swift crowd looks like, you know what a Maisie Peters crowd looks like. That’s been something I’ve been discovering – and it’s such a joy about what – seeing a community happen in real time and knowing that your music has been the seed of that community for all these crowds that you’re singing to.