Paris Paloma Finds Creation in the Chaos and Noises in Her Head on Debut Album ‘Cacophony’

By the time Paris Paloma made her way to Bergen, Norway, she had already written most of her debut album. Wanting to experiment with co-writing, the British singer/songwriter participated in Bergen Songs by Brak, a songwriting camp that paired her with songwriter and producer Eirik Hella (Moyka) and Norwegian artist Markella. The three sat in a room with Paloma’s “small starting point,” which became “the warmth,” a song inspired by Norwegian pop and the only co-write on her debut Cacophony.

As Paloma began working on the album, the songs became a chronicle of key moments in her life and naturally sewed to any remaining stories. “I was noticing what those existing songs had been documenting about my life previously and about my thoughts and feelings,” Paloma tells American Songwriter. “Then it was about continuing that story.”

Real life and mythology intersect on Cacophony, navigating themes of creation coming out of chaos while trying to make sense of trauma, human frailties, and injustices. A cobweb of darkened pop and meditative balladry leave a heavy top coat on the 15 tracks with the opening “my mind (now)” and Paloma asking What did I do wrong / Will you tell me what I did wrong before her caterwaul release towards its end. More aches and pains pass through “pleaser” and “his land,” before “drywall” and her boys-to-men tale “boys, bugs, and men” add a lift within the intentional sequencing of the songs.

“I decided on the order retroactively,” says Paloma of the movement on the album. “As opposed to being a concept album, it’s a body of work that feels very much like an anthology of some kind, a documentation of everything the songs speak to. I thought quite carefully about the waves, the mood, and the tone that move through the album.”

The lead single and a song Paloma wrote three years earlier, “as good a reason” is even danceable, while “triassic love song” gently sinks into the story of an archaeological find, a “Triassic Cuddle” found in South Africa of an intertwined fossil of a mammal-life and amphibian.

Cacophony continues excavating the origins and realities of life on what Paloma dubs her “apocalypse trio”: “Escape pod,” a track she had brewing for two years, ponders being launched into space, and darkness, for eternity; “last woman on earth,” addresses the continued “violent and exploitation” of women’s bodies; and “bones on the beach,” offers another fossilized contemplation, When I’m in my bed / I like to pretend that my body is just bones on the beach.

Though Cacophony is a palette of Paloma’s personal experiences and observations, some songs altered in meaning over time. “There’s something that happens when songs are released,” says Paloma. “There’s this incubation period after you’ve written and produced a song when it means what it means to you.

“Labour,” which gained nearly 30 million views on YouTube, is one example of a song she says shifted into something “much bigger” than when she initially wrote it. To commemorate the one-year anniversary of the single, Paloma released a video “LABOUR (the cacophony)” featuring a grid of fans singing along to the song.

“It [‘labour’] took on more meaning because of what was injected back into it by the listeners,” says Paloma. “‘My mind (now)’ is another one where, rather than the listeners, it was more about what it meant to me to have that song released that made it so meaningful, in all of its pain and vulnerability.”

Everything was carefully stitched together, even the title, prompted by Stephen Fry’s 2017 book Mythos and the Greek mythology story of creation and chaos (cacophony) at its beginning. The idea of a “noisy mind” is a recurring motif throughout the album, says Paloma, and Cacophony alluded to this.

“I thought a long time about the title,” reveals Paloma. “And it ended up sort of being an allusion to the Greek creation myth and chaos because that’s how it felt in the midst of a lot of the feelings that drove me to write the songs. And the songs were an act of creation and sprang out of the chaos and the noise inside my mind.”

Since releasing her debut single “Narcissus” in 2020, Paloma has undergone a major transition as a songwriter and artist. “To look back on my discography now, you can clearly see that it’s quite messy,” she says. “You can see that I’m growing and trying to attempt different things, and I’m finding my style as I’m releasing music.”

There was a time, Paloma admits she was envious of artists who “seemed to have their sound figured out” before they released their first song and had a cohesive or “neat style” around their discography. “That was not true for me,” says Paloma. “But I also think there’s a certain beauty in the way that my debut songs are not songs I’d write anymore. I was younger and trying to figure out what worked, but I stand by that journey, even if I don’t stand by the style of songwriting I adopted back then.”

She adds, “It’s just the acceptance of knowing that that was the journey that got you here.”

Paloma still feels connected to earlier songs—and disconnected from others. “Some songs I feel quite disconnected from because they don’t serve me anymore, or I’ve moved on entirely, emotionally from it,” says Paloma. “That’s the same with anything. You can’t always retain an intense emotional connection to the past, because it prevents you from having new inspirations to take its place.”

Moving ahead, Paloma is already working on what comes next. “Songwriting for me is an absolute constant that is always happening,” she says. “It’s just what I do and what I want to do, and one of the things that comes most naturally to me in the world.”

Photo: Jennifer McCord / Courtesy of Nettwerk Music Group