Ones2Watch Home

Photos by Isabel Dowell

It is almost inevitable that most women will go through a phase of life where femininity feels like a curse; where the only way to stand out is to appease the men in your life. Paris Paloma is here to break that spell and to encourage you to stand up for yourself, your female friends, and the matriarchy as a whole. Coming off strong from her debut album, Cacophony, Paloma will be releasing her sophomore LP, The Fatal Flaw, offering listeners a window into her inner world. Rooted in art, Greek mythology, and femininity, this album is a love letter to women and the female gaze, pushing aside any man that tries to say otherwise.

Even if you haven’t heard the name Paris Paloma before, it is almost impossible to have not heard of her song, “labour”. Amassing over half a billion streams on Spotify alone, “labour” continues to trend on TikTok periodically since its release in 2023. This song not only helped project Paloma into the spotlight, but encouraged her to embrace her own femininity and inspire other young women to do the same. Paris Paloma is emotional, fearless, and embraces every characteristic of what it means to be a woman living in the 21st century. 

OnesToWatch: How would you introduce yourself to someone who isn't familiar with your music?

Paris Paloma: I don’t really know how I define the genre that I write about, but I’m really inspired by mythology and Gothic literature and art history. My new album, The Fatal Flaw, is more so that than I’ve ever done before. It is so rooted in art and art history and myth and stories that it feels like great tapestries and beautiful heavy paintings. 

You just dropped your new single, “Pre-Raphaelite”, tell us more about that.

It was one of the most fun songs to write on the album. It’s not a super heavy topic, but I wrote it about that feeling of being a girl and being really mesmerized by other girls and sometimes comparing yourself to them. Sometimes feeling more jealous of the things they have, but then the ways that make you, you, are shaped and sculpted of yourself in their image. There are so many girls from my youth, some from my 20s, a lot more recently that I’ve felt for. I very much knew myself as a patchwork of every girl I’ve ever known. I named it “Pre-Raphaelite” after the paintings done by the pre-raphaelites. I very much see those kinds of women as muses and artists themselves and the pre-raphaelite’s music, like Jane Morris and Elizabeth Siddal. They were so iconic and they’re so recognizable. They were also artists themselves. It’s occupying that space of both inspiring other people, but then making your own art as well. 

So, this single is a love letter to the female gaze.

It really is. One of the reasons why I adore the pre-raphaelites so much is that their music, the people, and the women that they painted have such strong and distinctive features. We’re in a time right now where the appreciation of women’s beauty is such a lost art and the male gaze has become so insular. I really wanted this song to be a massive love letter to the female gaze, to women with unique features and some beautiful ways of seeing the world and moving through the world and not being defined by all trying to look the same.

How do you feel that femininity has shaped who you are as an artist?

Just really leaning into that female gaze, that aspect of being feminine and embracing it; honestly, it's a really recent thing. I feel like this album is where I do that kind of for the first time. I viewed myself in a really androgynous way before and I viewed womanhood as something that kind of happened to me. I know that other women have said that and I think I have not felt incredibly feminine for a lot of my life. I’m finding the ways in which I find it empowering now because I have been on this journey of extricating what femininity is without the patriarchy and questioning which elements I would still partake in if the patriarchy didn’t exist. That goes back to beauty standards and the way that I dress and do my makeup and present myself to the world. Also, the things that I choose to do artistically. It’s been a really fun and very new terrain. 

Your music video for “Pre-Raphaelite” emphasizes femininity and features the muses from Greek mythology. Are you into mythology? Are there any other stories you find yourself drawn to?

Yes, there is a song on the album called “Pyrrhus (you go where I cannot)” and it is named after the song of Achilles. He’s obviously in the Iliad and he's across several works of fiction by Pat Barker and Madeline Miller. I really view him as the archetype of the young boy seduced by war and masculinity. We see so many Pyrrhuses today within the manosphere. Young men are taken in by figures like Andrew Tate and toxic masculinity and the institution of war. I wrote that song from the perspective of his mother and that’s sort of one of the key points at which Greek mythology has inspired this album. I make constant allusions to it. I come back to it time and time again. Women are so drawn to it because we are so used to having our experiences denied and invalidated. Mythology proves that these are very ancient feelings, and it makes it legitimate somehow. 

What does the story of your album tell? How does it fit into the Paris Paloma universe?

The album is an anthology about love and art. Those are the two things I feel like my life really boils down to at the bottom, when nothing is left. My process and my journey through loving, from a very dysfunctional and toxic love, and love between friends, learning what that looks like and then finding healthy love and falling in love… Art has been the closest companion throughout my life. It’s my way of making sense of the world, my way of connecting with other people. It’s my way of making my voice heard enough to make myself feel worthy of loving. I was really inspired by bell hooks and her book, All About Love, and the way that she writes about love, it’s like an anthology. There’s parts about familial love, about romantic love, friendship and toxic, dysfunctional love. That’s what a great deal of the album is and all the different songs are different branches of the same tree.

When I’d written “labour”, that was such a massive thing. My first album was so introspective and there was a lot of anger. There was a lot of loneliness and a lot of longing. Then suddenly, I was confronted with this captive audience who resonated with songs like “labour” and my work. I was like, “Wow, I have an audience that understands this and is interested. Where can I go with this in a more nuanced way that will actually further that conversation and not dumb down the conversations of feminism, masculinity, and what it is to be a woman loving a man?" That’s a massive theme on this new album.

What is a piece of advice or a message you would give to young women that feel bogged down by society or are unable to embrace their femininity because of what men or society says?

Find female friends and build each other up. Talk to each other about your experiences and the greatest antidote to internalized misogyny is learning to build other women up. In doing that, they build you up and you learn how to build yourself up as well. You unlearn punishing women for being loud or for wanting things or for being talented. Decide what you want to tolerate from men’s behavior around you and keep to that. Because of that, all of the men in my life are so incredibly loving and incredible allies. They are wonderful friends and bands that I play with. These people that I have around me, it makes a world of difference. 

Is there anything not music related or in your personal life that you are looking forward to?

I’m really looking forward to when everything dies down a little bit and just getting back to some painting in my house. That would be really, really lovely. I think that was always the first language I had spoken before it was music. When I’m touring, I miss it a lot. I have my little travel sets that I bring with me and I draw when I can, but it’s really about building a visual world and then living in it. That’s sometimes where the songs come out of. 

Who are your current OnesToWatch?

I love my two friends, Sarah Julia. They’re an incredible band of two sisters from the Netherlands. I had them for openers on several tours and they are just really hypnotic, harmonic folk. It’s so gorgeous and the music, the lyrics are so incredible. Even though I know them, I have been empowered by their music so many times. I’ve been to their shows and just cried at their voices. It’s beautiful.

Listen to Paris Paloma below: