Arlo interview: 'Being endorsed by Elton John was priceless'

Rising: Hackney-born soul-pop singer Arlo
Matt Writtle

For someone seemingly so loud, David Ikechukwu — known publicly by his stage name, Arlo — has kept his career as a musician quiet from his friends. “I never told anyone about it,” says the Hackney-born soul-pop singer, 24, laughing as he recalls liking friends’ Instagram posts from his new verified artist account four years ago. “They’d be like: ‘Who is this Arlo? He looks very familiar’.”

It turns out that “this Arlo” was more than just a mysterious Instagram account: in 2015, alongside his politics and economics degree at Goldsmiths, he teamed up with Warner Chappell Music producer Lostboy to record his first single, Ivory, and months later he quit his internship at Bank of America in New York to pursue music full-time.

Four years on, Arlo has just passed two million streams on Spotify and has been endorsed by a string of big names: Elton John praised Ivory on his Rock Hour Beats 1 radio show; another single, Settle, was played on this summer’s Love Island; he’s written with the likes of Diplo and Sacha Skarbek (Adele, Lana Del Rey, Miley Cyrus); and critics have compared him to Sam Smith (“but cooler”). So cool, in fact, that Arlo still refuses to talk about his music with his friends, he tells me over a glass of water (he doesn’t drink coffee) before our shoot in Kensington. Tomorrow night, he performs for the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 party, recognising the people changing London’s future for the better.

“I feel like there’s music,” he says, putting one hand out. “… and then there’s normal life”: arguing about Brexit with friends in the pub, playing with his nephew, house parties in Hoxton where he grew up (and still lives now, around the corner from his family home).

His songs are often inspired by the stories they tell in the pub, “mostly because my life’s so boring,” adds Arlo, saying he wrote Settle at a time when all his friends were going through break-ups. “My female friends in particular are good at describing their emotions, so I get great lyrical ideas from things they say. As they’re talking, I’m just typing.”

Is he in a relationship? “I’m dating but single,” he says, coolly. He doesn’t using dating apps because “you can’t be too sure who you’re speaking to on those things. Even on Instagram, people send me messages starting with ‘I like your music’, then ‘what you doing later?’”

He went on one date that way and “she was a lovely girl but it was weird because the music can be all you end up talking about, so I’m going to stay away from anyone sliding into my DMs for now.”

Arlo is “not a social media person” but admits he’s addicted to YouTube. Mostly, he watches “trash” such as Keeping Up with the Kardashians: last week, he was three hours late to a rehearsal after getting into a YouTube hole.

“That’s what I’m like,” he laughs. “I’m one of those people who has no middle ground: you have to be all-in or nothing” — which is what his latest single, Jugular, is all about. It’s the first song he’s released that’s purely about himself and the reception from fans has been “crazy”.

His whole family (he has four siblings, including an identical twin brother) have been supportive of his career, despite both his parents being academics and pushing him to get a degree. Arlo always thought he’d be a politician or a CEO and still takes an interest in the business side of things, insisting on going along to his manager’s meetings and talking about politics in the pub.

“Some of [my friends] are Conservative, some of us are Labour, Lib Dems, everything.” He’s voted Labour all his life but studying the subject put him off politics as a career because debates became “very toxic”.

What does he think of the gentrification in Hoxton where he grew up? “Where my sister lives used to be barber shops and chicken shops; now it’s bakeries, which is fine,” he says. “My issue sometimes is with housing: they knock flats down, move people and then don’t move them back. But I’m not adverse to a bakery — I like cake”.

He tries not to shy away from his Britishness with his music. “Some words don’t sound that good in an English accent,” he explains, demonstrating by dropping the “t” in “water”. “But I make a precedent to do it. You see people like Lily Allen and Kate Nash, who’ve always adopted that singing in a British accent.”

How did it feel being compared to Sam Smith? Arlo admits he “[doesn’t] really see it” but he is flattered: “Sam is probably the biggest male artist in the UK, in the world right now: him and Ed [Sheeran]. If I can have 10 per cent of his success I’ll take it”.

Meanwhile being endorsed by Elton John was “mecca”: “you don’t get bigger than Elton. For him to play my music and say ‘he’s one to watch’, you can’t pay for that,” he smiles. “Well, maybe you can, but we didn’t.”

  • The Progress 1000, in partnership with the global bank Citi, is the Evening Standard’s celebration of the people changing London’s future for the better and will be announced on October 3.

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