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I Love Whatever's Wrong With You: Parris Mitchell Is Done Picking a Lane
- LJ Portnoy
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
The NYC alt-pop songwriter, Parris Mitchell, on the work behind the wonder, and why he refuses to fit in one box - an Underground Radar feature.
Article Contributed by LJ Portnoy
Press play on a Parris Mitchell song and you're locked in before you've decided to be. The production is bright, the hooks land before you've made up your mind about them, and for a few minutes, the rest of the room goes quiet. Then you listen again and notice the words underneath are quietly taking the floor out from under you.
LJ gave it a name in our conversation, happy heartbreak, and Parris lit up. "I love songs where the melody is uplifting and very happy, and then you listen again and go, wait, these lyrics are actually pretty upsetting," he said. "I love that double take." That contrast, the smile on top and the ache underneath, is the whole project. We first caught the NYC artist on TikTok with "Honey, I," then watched his set supporting Enrose in New York, and the feeling only got louder.
The detour that became the path
Parris didn't set out to be a solo artist. He came up in musical theater and spent years touring with a band. Then 2020 pulled the rug out from live music, and he turned inward and started writing for himself for the first time, with no plan attached. "I just put them out for my own sake," he said. "I wasn't looking for crazy growth or followers. They ended up doing pretty damn well. I was like, all right, maybe I've got something here."
His debut, "Specifically You," dropped quietly in December 2020 and racked up over 20,000 Spotify streams within a year, followed by a steady run: "Charger," "Bad Place," "I Never Said I'm Perfect," and "Easy Love." Still, the title of "musician" took him a while to claim. "I can't read music. I wasn't in band in high school, I was in chorus. It wasn't until my first couple of singles that I got the confidence to go, all right, hell yeah. I'm a songwriter."
"It's cheaper than therapy"
Parris now has roughly 40 songs in the arsenal and a plan to release one every six weeks. Somewhere around late last year, he stopped waiting for inspiration and started showing up whether it came or not. "It's like turning on a faucet," he said. "All the dirty water comes out first, then you get to the one where you go, all right, this slaps."
When inspiration does strike, it's less a process than a weather event. "It's like a Ouija board. I could be out at a bar, someone says something, and suddenly it hits. The skill is staying observant and open, because if you're not, you miss a really great hook." Most of it lands in his Notes app. "I'm always forgetting I typed them in there. I feel like my mother operating an iPhone." As for why he keeps mining his own inner monologue: "It's cheaper than therapy."
Service the song first
Ask Parris what his signature sound is and you've hit the hardest question in the room, the one his manager keeps asking too. "If I played you my next ten demos, not one would sound like the other," he said. "I don't like being put in a box. I'm kind of a slave to the song I'm writing. If it needs to sound more yacht rock, more country, more indie rock, that's what it gets. I have to service the song before I can service the artist."
One test holds underneath all the genre-hopping, something he learned early: "If a song doesn't sound good acoustically, it's not a good song." He proved it in February with stripped-down cabin shows on a cruise ship.
The result surprised him. "Even the happiest songs felt mellow. Very raw. It made me want to go back and ask, why did I say this? What did I really mean?" He's also quick to admit he can't always tell when a song is done. His new single nearly didn't make it out because of it, until friends he trusts talked him off the ledge. "Trust your gut, but also trust the people you trust most."
His Biggest Vice: The Stage
If the writing is solitary, the stage is where the theater kid resurfaces. "Performing is a drug. The best feeling in the world," he said. "I love calibrating the show based on what I'm getting back from the crowd. It's like a 3D chess game. I love when something goes wrong. Me and my band are so locked in we can turn a mistake into the highlight of the show." You can hear New York in all of it, the who-gives-a-shit swagger braided with genuine warmth.
"If I screw up, I own it. But I also want to take care of you like my mother would if you came over for dinner. If I can give somebody twenty-five minutes of forgetting all the stuff going on in their life, that's the most special feeling there is."
He's open about the imposter syndrome and the burnout ("I've been burnt out a thousand times. I'm still burnt out"), but something quieter keeps pulling him back. "The core of me is so loud, and it never gets quieter. I have to obey it. This is the gift I was given." He takes the music seriously and himself far less so. Asked what he's most proud of, he didn't reach for a track. "I'm most proud of today. I'm proud of the resilience. Even when it's really difficult, I still show up."
New Single: I Love Whatever is Wrong With You
We made him describe his new single without saying the title, a tall order he met with a grin ("I'm not the Killers, who gives a shit"). The song, he said, is "a love song about the person you love's imperfections: how love is messy, how nobody's perfect, and finding the one whose imperfections are perfect to you. You don't just accept them or love them. You celebrate them." Then he played it, and the name landed: "I Love Whatever is Wrong With You."
You lose yourself at least three times a week / you laugh too loud at your own jokes, you repeat... / I love whatever is wrong with you.
Classic Parris: a bright, big-hearted hook wrapped around something genuinely vulnerable. Happy heartbreak, in other words. Before he left, he shouted out a couple of acts doing it right, Some Son (New York / New Jersey, "putting out banger after banger") and Graham Goode and the Painters (out west, "one of the most talented bands I've seen live"), and left a message for everyone listening: "Be kind to one another. There's not a lot of time here. Always let somebody know you love them, but always love yourself first."
Parris Mitchell's new single, "I Love Whatever's Wrong With You," is out now.
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