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Music

The Quiet Confidence of Stevie Parker

With only a couple songs to her name, we're earmarking this 24-year-old Brit as one to keep an eye on.

That kid. You know the one—quiet, thoughtful, not the popular kid, not the bully or the bullied. The kind of kid who’s never first, or second, or even third to raise their hand in class, but when they finally speak, they blow everyone away. Musically speaking, British newcomer Stevie Parker is that kid. The soft-spoken 24-year-old would never describe herself as outgoing—reclusive is one of the first words she picks—but her atmospheric debut single, “The Cure,” is akin to the first time she speaks up with confidence. The track starts out quietly enough: over pulsing synths, Parker depicts a tumultuous, all-consuming relationship in her smoky, stripped-down way (not dissimilar to Aussie songstress Banoffee’s tones). Her lyrics are original and almost uncomfortably evocative: “Can’t shake the feel of you yet / Our tangled breath meets in the air / Your hands like matchsticks on my skin / Unleash the beast within.” The synths continue to swell until Parker breaks on the bridge: “I will surrender to those eyes / It’s just a matter of time.” She’s not just an observer; she has something raw and real to say.

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It’s a slow build that echoes these early days of Parker’s career. As a kid growing up in the quaint, cobblestoned town of Frome in Somerset, she’d write songs for fun and record them with her father, who is also a musician. “[My dad] would always accommodate my random creative whims,” Parker says, affectionately. “He probably put up with a lot of boring hours … I think he was the catalyst of [my music career].” But it wasn’t until her early teens that Parker began writing music with her best friend—as well as accompanying other musicians on piano or guitar—that her desire to create and perform on her own began to take hold. Eventually, she found herself wanting to perform solo too: “I’m not somebody who really needs limelight,” she says. “But there is a point where you get kind of tired of doing a lot of work and people are glossing over you. At the time I felt like a bit of a spare part. I wanted to express myself more and felt like I had valuable things to offer, but I didn’t have a lot of self confidence, you know?”

At 16 Parker made her big leap: she entered a singing competition at school and performed alone for the very first time. Although she didn’t win the contest—“I remember feeling a little bit sour grapes about it”—it gave her the boost she needed to venture out on her own. “That [competition] was the first time that anyone had really heard me,” she says. “And people were just like, ‘You’re really good!’ After that, I became very obsessed with writing songs… but [at the time] it wasn’t something where I was like, ‘I’ve got to be a musician.’ It kind of followed me around and eventually I thought, ‘I can’t see myself doing anything else. I’d quite like to have a go at this.’ Now, I feel very differently. Music is everything I want. It helped me find some kind of place for myself in the world, whereas I’m used to feeling quite adrift and a bit of an alien amongst people. It really helped me stamp an identity on myself.”

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One of the people who helped Parker form her artist’s identity is Grammy Award-winning writer and producer Jimmy Hogarth (Sia, Amy Winehouse, James Bay, et al). Parker and Hogarth first linked up for “The Cure,” but then continued working together on the majority of her debut album, which is expected out next year. “It started out as a skeleton, with just the lyrics and the melodies, and we turned it into the song it is now, with the pulsating synths as a foundation,” explains Parker. “In the process, the song became a benchmark for the aesthetic of the rest of the album.”

But it was some five years ago, when she was deep in the throes of an on-again-off-again relationship, that the beginnings of “The Cure” began to form: “‘The Cure’ isn’t really about wanting somebody back or needing someone’s love,” Parker explains. “The person who inspired that song might think it’s just a love song, but it’s not really. It never was. I would say it’s more a song about knowing that something isn’t really right for you, and kind of feeling sucked into the vortex of [a relationship]… knowing that you’re not really wanting to go there, but not being able to help it.”

It’s accompanying brooding video mirrors this type of internal struggle. In it, Parker perches on an unmade bed in a dark room, hands clasped, peering out the window presumably waiting for someone to return. During the bridge, she finally ventures outside, ambling down a road lined with sallow streetlights, ultimately walking into complete darkness. Eventually day breaks and back in the room, sunlight streaks Parker’s face. There’s a sense that the worst is over, for now. “We wanted to really convey that horrible irrevocable [sense of] being swept away by all these feelings and the nostalgia,” Parker says of the video. “This damned if you do, damned if you don’t, nature.”

Even though Parker maintains the situation that inspired “The Cure” is a part of her past—“I found out that person is married now,” she says. “That was a shock… I’m very much finished with that situation and glad to be”—she still channels those intense emotions during shows. “I hope that’s visible when people are watching me,” she says. “I really want them to see that."

And this summer, people have gotten plenty of chances, at least in the United Kingdom, where Parker lit up the festival circuit with performances at Field Day, Secret Garden Party, and Wilderness, to name a few. The now Bristol-based singer's career is still nascent—this is her first proper single ("Never Be" was a an online taster posted up over a year ago)—but she’s already come a long way since that singing competition at sixteen. Now, Parker says performing live is her favorite part of being an artist. “I don’t really get nervous anymore,” she admits. “Bad gigs are bad gigs, but when they’re good, there’s nothing quite like it.”

Parker’s next single is slated for September and her debut album is expected out next year.

Follow Avery Stone on Twitter.