After starting 2021 with the release of her stellar debut album, Arlo Parks seems to have her eyes on 2022 now with her new song "Softly."
The glowing new single arrived this week, starting a new chapter for the Grammy-nominated singer. It finds her exploring bright and buoyant musical territory, along with a video directed by Zhang and Knight.
"'Softly' is a song about yearning, about how fragile you feel in the dying days of a relationship when you’re still desperately in love," says Parks. "The song is about how it feels to brace yourself before the blow of a break up and reminisce about the days where it all felt luminous."
Adds Zhang and Knight of the video: "For us, 'Softly' explored the idea of wanting something that was once perfect to end in a gentle way, and we wanted to express this using the world surrounding Arlo. We were instinctively drawn to the warm toned, hazy nostalgia of the 1960's, as we loved the idea of something universally romantic being slowly stripped away throughout the film."
They continue: "We based the colors of the bricks, trims and doors on mid-century painting in order to bake this romanticism into everything. The production itself was a huge challenge, as everything was captured in-camera with each piece of the set built on wheels operated by several production crew. However, we knew it was all worth it when we saw the skyscrapers dancing around Arlo for the first time."
Check it out below.