Softly does it for new Arlo Parks video

One year after launching her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, for which she won the 2021 Mercury Prize, Arlo Parks releases a new single Softly with a lush video directed by Zhang + Knight. 

The promo combines pink-toned soft hues with the artist's smooth sound and the tender lyrics for which she has always been so praised.

The directing duo bring to life the track through a picture-perfect New York-themed set, which slowly unravels layer by layer. The concept of the video reflects the lyrics of the song, which “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,” Zhang + Knight commented.

“We were instinctively drawn to the warm toned, hazy nostalgia of the 1960s," they went on, "as we loved the idea of something universally romantic being slowly stripped away throughout the film. We based the colours of the bricks, trims and doors on mid-century painting in order to bake this romanticism into everything.”

Parks shared that “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”, a luminosity that is captured in the warm light of the video before it is all stripped away leaving a final shot of Parks in the dark, sat on top of a still New York yellow cab, reflecting the feeling of a relationship coming to an end.