NOTION The Artists Vol. 1: Paris Paloma

Casting spells of folk magic and fierce femininity, Derbyshire’s Paris Paloma is fast becoming the voice of women worldwide. With a potent mix of mythology, legend, and surrealism, she’s dismantling the patriarchy one track at a time, and her journey has only just begun.

It’s September 6th, 2024, and Paris is alive. The city, yes—but so is Paloma herself. She has just wrapped up the first gig of her European tour at a sold-out venue on the outskirts of the city. The energy is still thick in the air, lingering like a spell. Her audience—affectionately dubbed her “fairies”—were enthralled for hours, lost in the mystical, folksy world Paris and her music conjures.

But something’s still brewing in the crowd— something Paris has no clue about as she unwinds backstage, tossing her things together, the calm of post-performance settling over her like a soft cloak. Suddenly, her tour manager bursts through the door, eyes wide, breathless, with a grin splitting his face. “They’re all holding hands, dancing in circles,” he says, holding out his phone and showing her the video. The fans, mostly young women are spinning in two giant rings, hands clasped, swaying and twirling in unison. It’s hypnotic. Without hesitation, Paris yanks her boots back on, and sprints outside to see it for herself. Grabbing a fan’s hand, she dives into the dance; they spin together under the dim arena lights, laughter spilling into the air. It was like they were performing some ancient instinctive ritual. And in a way, they were. There’s no pretence, no filters, just an eruption of pure, unadulterated joy. It’s womanhood in all its glory.

“After that night, every gig ended with a fairy dance,” Paris beams, reflecting on her inaugural gig on her European tour. It’s a month later, and she’s back in London, sitting in her cosy living room with a cup of tea in her hand, her ash-blonde hair still slightly damp from the shower. She’s got an English rose allure—teal eyes that dance with life, youthful rosy cheeks, and a quiet energy that seems to vibrate just beneath the surface. “I feel like I’ve just rolled out of bed,” she says, laughing off the compliment I pay her.

Lately, Paris has been taking time to reflect. She’s been peeling back layers, digging deeper into the purpose that her music serves. Deep question, right? But if anyone could answer it aptly, it’s Paris. “I think a lot of my music is a self-portrait. I write about what I know and what I’ve experienced,” she muses, her voice soft but thoughtful. Since her debut single in 2020, her music has always been a cathartic rupture, a visceral outlet for the tempest of emotions she navigates. Writing for her is a way to process her emotions, ensuring that each note reflects her continued quest for identity. Bottom line is: if she’s felt it, she’s turned it into music.

But don’t expect typical singer-songwriter confessions from Paris. Raised on a diet of Joni Mitchell, storytelling was always on the cards for her, yet she has never been one to follow the crowd. While her classmates dreamed of becoming astronauts or pop stars, she imagined life as a florist. And while they cheered for no homework, she gave herself extra writing assignments, handing them in to her teacher, just for fun. It’s in her DNA to do things her way. So rather than putting her emotions on display for public consumption, she channels her inner world through myth and folklore. “I want to write songs that are personal, but I don’t want to lay my pain out on a mortuary slab for people to dissect. My emotions aren’t there to be trivialised,” she insists.

For Paris, growing up in the isolated Derbyshire countryside sparked a deep connection between solitude and ancient storytelling. Myths became her vehicle to explore her emotions—a gateway, if you will. “By weaving in myth, you show that these feelings have existed since the dawn of time. It’s a way to breathe life into stories that might otherwise be overlooked,” she says fondly.

Take her viral-cum-unintentional-anthem-for- women’s-rights, ‘labour’. Inspired by Madeline Miller’s Circe, Paris found herself drawn to the Greek sorceress—an isolated figure, a woman who domesticates and builds her own sanctuary, only to find herself labouring for others. “So many women do so much for someone else. They build everything for them, and they don’t even get to reap the rewards of it,” Paris explains frankly. Drawing parallels to modern-day heterosexual relationships, Paris had no other option than to get it off her chest: “It was just me getting out my frustrations. It was never meant to be a call to arms”, she says with a wry smile.

But the universe had other plans. While ‘labour’ starts with delicate strings and a thrum of bass, its crescendo sees Paris erupt into a pagan-like chant: “All day, every day, therapist, mother, maid / Nymph, then a virgin, nurse, then a servant”. Just like that, ‘labour’ turned into a feminist battle cry. Pair those lyrics with a dark gothic-inspired music video—involving Paris gorging on bloodied-red fruits—and you’ve got an artist unapologetically claiming her title as a voice, and a sonic safe place, for women.

Rousing 170 million streams on Spotify alone and a flood of feminist TikTok response videos, women worldwide instantly felt seen with many duetting it in their own cultural contexts. But going viral overnight isn’t something you can easily prepare for. “‘labour’ went viral so quickly, I couldn’t comprehend it. So much so that I withdrew into myself creatively. I knew I couldn’t just drop another single after that. I had to do something bigger,” Paris recalls. “I have always used my music to feel heard and listened to, just for my own well-being. Suddenly I had this massive audience come out of nowhere, and it made me pause and ask myself, what do I really want to say?”

Paris Paloma’s debut album, Cacophony, released this summer, holds the answer to that question. It’s an intricate dance through Paris’ internal labyrinth, where each of the 15-tracks pulsates with the raw and unfiltered sounds of her emotions. The title itself speaks volumes. ‘Cacophony’ traditionally denotes a jarring mixture of sounds, but for Paris, it symbolises the “heavy and scraping chaos within.” Drawing inspiration from Stephen Fry’s Mythos, particularly his retelling of the Greek creation myth, Paris sees the universe’s chaotic birth as a mirror of her own mental state. “In the myth, creation emerges from chaos. For me, that mental chaos is when I become my most creative self,” she explains.

Taking on the arc of a hero’s journey, filled with trials, profound depths and fleeting flashes of hope, Cacophony moves through the emotions of Paris’ formative years. It’s not a concept album, per se, rather a collection of songs that fittingly represent her trajectory. “I was writing about patriarchy and about what it means to be a woman, just to feel like I had a voice,” Paris says, her words hitting like a quiet rebellion. “I had all this pain, all this internal struggle, and I needed to make sense of it.”

Laying her emotions bare from the get-go, the opening track, ‘my mind (now)’ slams you with a stripped down acapella verse that quickly spirals into chaos. As Paris surfaces for air, a wild blend of swirling synths and high-octane trumpets erupts, punctuated by her haunting plea of “What did I do wrong?”, that reverberates in the backdrop. It’s an ardent ride from then onwards. Whilst ‘pleaser’ delves into themes of loneliness and isolation, ‘his land’ unleashes anger atop a new age piano, discussing the lingering threat of misogyny that resonates throughout the entire album.

But, at the heart of the album lies in her self- described “apocalypse trio” of tracks: ‘escape pod’, ‘last woman on earth’ and ‘bones on the beach’. Cutting the deepest, the tracks show Paris’ thoughts at “rock bottom”, all exploring various psychological tolls whilst living in a world built for men. “‘escape pod’ is about my isolation and this sense of hopelessness, while ‘the last woman on earth’ is about how patriarchy has affected my mental health and my life, Paris explains.

For Paris, life under the patriarchy is a constant battle—misogyny is rife, gender violence is ever- present and the suffocating expectations of how women should behave are carved into every layer of the fight. “There is an expectation that women have to be experts just to explain why we should be treated better. I’m not an academic. When I was younger, I had a lot of insecurities about how to phrase things and second-guessing if I was saying the right thing. All I could rely on was what I knew to be wrong based on how it made me feel,” Paris says candidly.

‘bones on the beach’ best encapsulates this feeling of helplessness when it comes to fighting for equality. Ultimately the song is a moment of exhaustion, the kind that only comes after carrying too much for too long. The weight of her experiences is laid bare, but it’s not all bleak. As the track progresses, so does its tone—light begins to pierce through, offering glimpses of hope amidst the darkest of shadows. This shift paves the way for ‘hunter’, the follow-up track that shows that Cacophony isn’t all fire and fury, with the narrative reminding us that even in chaos moments of peace and light are worth holding onto.

There are more softer moments throughout Cacophony. Take ‘knitting song’, a heartfelt nod to the women who’ve shaped Paris’ life, and ultimately a tale of the unbreakable bonds of women’s love. In every hero’s journey, they will always stumble across a wise mentor, and for Paris it’s her grandmother who inspired the song. “My grandma taught me how it knit. It’s something I share with my female friends now. It made me realise that the love you have with women in your life is incarnate and is reincarnated in your other relationships with women.” Other moments of vulnerability pulse through tracks like ‘as good a reason’ and ‘triassic love song’, the latter a surreal ode to a prehistoric fossil where a protomammal and amphibian are frozen together in an eternal embrace.

You could call Cacophony chaos, maybe even fury—an explosion of anger, a riot against a world that tries to silence it. Sure, it’s rage, it’s all the everyday injustices women face, but for Paris Paloma, it’s deeper. It’s about women taking back control, owning the conversation and finally taking the driver’s seat. “Female rage comes from a good place. We’re told we shouldn’t get angry, but we still do anyway. But what’s more important is to understand that we’ve been defied since the start of time whilst being oppressed. Men say they don’t oppress us because they worship us through goddesses, but that’s not real. That’s putting women in a box, making her bound by certain parameters of the role she should fulfil. Same goes for feminine rage—it gets deified making it into something less real and less human.”

Paris hints at the idea of a new album, though nothing’s set in stone yet. She’s letting her music breathe, grow on its own terms with no deadlines, no rush, just pure evolution. What’s crystal clear now is that Paris is reclaiming her agency and calling the shots. “It’s so easy as a young artist to be overwhelmed by everything and to feel like you have to let others take the wheel,” she pauses, draws a deep breath, and adds, “I’m no longer so overwhelmed that I want to shy away. I’m the one who steers this ship.”