Paris Paloma, a young singer/songwriter from the United Kingdom, has gained 663,000 followers on TikTok, performing songs that capture the female experience. Best known for her viral song “labour,” the 24-year-old Glasgow-born artist has resonated with women who post TikToks using the song to voice their struggles and experiences with the patriarchy.
Now she’s introducing herself in person to new fans across the pond with her first official American tour, “my mind (now),” including a sold-out concert at The Sinclair in Cambridge on June 22.
“It’s the highest honor as a songwriter to have people kind of use your music as a tool to feel more understood,” Paloma said over Zoom from her Los Angeles hotel room last week, before her show that night.
In “labour,” she lists roles women are forced to assume, singing “therapist, mother, maid ... live to attend him so he doesn’t lift a finger,” and “It’s not an act of love if you make her / you make me do too much labour.”
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“They’re realizations that I’ve had within my own head that I want to share with other people,” Paloma said. “In doing so, I find resonant frequencies with other women who are going through the same thing.”
@parispalomaofficial ITS FINALLY HERE ❤️❤️ thank you so much to all of you for contributing and making such a special project. #labour #newmusic #womenoftiktok
♬ LABOUR - the cacophony - Paris Paloma
The song, which Paloma wrote in her college dorm in 2022 while attending the University of London’s Goldsmiths College, has amassed more than 136 million listens on Spotify since she released it last spring. A year later, in March 2024, she released a reworked version titled “Labour—the cacophony,” mixing in recordings submitted by hundreds of women roaring along to her lyrics.
The song has become a kind of living tapestry of experiences. “You can’t predict something getting that much attention and resonating with that many people,” Paloma said “Trans people and women of color and people who have identities that are not mine use ‘labour’ to amplify their voices.”
During Women’s History Month in March, she performed the song at the Tate Britain in London for ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show.’ Later this month, she will take the stage at the Glastonbury Festival for the first time.
When Paloma was 13 years old, her grandmother gave her a guitar, and through a few classes and a lot of self-teaching, she learned to play and wrote a few songs, she said. But it wasn’t until college that she began to pursue music as a career. Her fanbase continues to grow as she finds her feet.
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“With most artists, at the start I’m making sure that all the bigger machines [in the music industry] know about them straight away,” Paloma’s manager Josh Sanger said over Zoom. “But then you actually kind of look back and you’re like, ‘Oh [expletive], we need to get fans on board.” But Paloma gained a fanbase first.
“The reality is, it’s not about one song … when you look at the timeless artists through the generations, they’re about multiple songs and storytelling beyond in a way that everything interconnects,” Sanger said.
And that’s Paloma’s passion: storytelling, a pastime that began as an interest in creative writing when she was a child and developed into a music career. She studied art history and fine arts at university, and imbues her lyrics with dashes of Greek mythology and Gothic literature, in songs that chronicle both personal and universal experiences.
In “as good a reason,” she invites readers to eavesdrop on a conversation, where an older woman relays her wisdom. “I’ll always remember the things she said / they were so wise, she opened my eyes, and they’ll never close again.” In “boys, bugs and men” she sings about the origins of men who mistreat women. “I have seen you relish such violence with joy / that I’ve only seen before in the eyes of little boys / discovering their power for the first time.”
@parispalomaofficial Boys, bugs and men out on the 10th may, so here are some of my thoughts behind the song ❤️🔥 video by Matt Butler #behindthesong #newmusic
♬ boys, bugs and men - Paris Paloma
Her small roster of songs, with album covers she paints herself, is growing, as her storytelling continues with the forthcoming release of her first album “Cacophony” on Aug. 30. She’ll perform the new songs throughout her seven tour stops in the United States.
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Paloma said she looks forward to returning to Massachusetts, the first place she visited in the US on a family trip when she was 13. “I think Boston was a city I felt really comfortable in,” she said.
She especially likes that her music has fostered a community. “I see people making friends in the audience, and in the queue outside, and online before they attend a show if they don’t have someone to go with,” Paloma said. “That’s one of the best things about my job and what I do. Watching that happen is so incredible.”
Maria Jose Gutierrez Chavez can be reached at mariajose.gutierrez@globe.com.