WICB Ithaca College was playing “Labour” when we first heard Paris Paloma. The guitar caught us, but her voice made us turn up the volume. Here was something different – a 25-year-old from Derbyshire who writes like she’s lived several lifetimes.
The song builds carefully—acoustic guitar, layered vocals, then that bridge that hits you like a revelation. By the time it was over, we knew we’d just discovered our next favorite artist.
Griffin has said little publicly about her lyrics, often deflecting attempts to decode their meanings. But maybe that’s the point. Living with Ghosts was never about clarity—it was about company. And You Are Not Alone, in its gentle insistence, reminds us: grief is private, but the ache is shared.
Most songwriters write from the first person as if they’re opening their diaries—confessional, autobiographical, inviting you into their emotional truth. Randy Newman writes from the first person like Flannery O’Connor or Raymond Carver: his “I” is a construct, a character who reveals himself through what he says and, more devastatingly, through what he casually omits.