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Hello, I'm Mark Savage, the BBC's music correspondent, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service, the best conversations coming out of the BBC, people shaping our world from all over the world.

If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention.

We have never seen a people so united.

Do not make that boat crossing. Do not make that journey.

Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not.

We're more popular than populism.

For this interview, I met the Mercury Prize-winning singer-songwriter Arlo Parks in East London.

Born on the other side of the city,

the half-Nigerian, quarter-chadian and quarter-French artist,

whose real name is Anae Marino,

has enjoyed great success in her music career

since her debut album was released in 2021. Having broken onto the music scene two years prior,

Parks has performed twice at the Glastonbury Music Festival in England, supported the likes

of Harry Stiles and Billy Elish on tour, and even written for Beyonce. It's been something of a whirlwind

journey for the 25-year-old who's returned with a new album after taking some time out of the

spotlight in order to reclaim some normality in her life. I knew that I wanted to take a little bit of

time to pause and just really live. My life has always been really nomadic, so even though I've

been in L.A. for four years, I still spend a lot of time in London and in Paris and in New York.

So it feels like, you know, I'm still getting different versions of life all the time.

I've definitely been in like an exploratory phase again. I've been going to a lot of

record shops as I've been traveling and kind of collecting, collecting records that I haven't

...