User:JSFarman/sandbox/Tayla Parx 2024

Taylor Monét Parks, known as Tayla Parx, is an American singer, songwriter, entrepreneur, and actor. A four-time Grammy nominee in the Album of the Year category, songs she has written and co-written have exceeded 16 billion streams on Spotify and appeared on the pop, hip hop, R & B, K-pop, country, and Latin charts. She has four albums, an EP, and a mixtape as a solo artist.

Born in Dallas, Texas, Parx took singing, dance, and classical piano lessons growing up and wrote her first songs as a child. At 9 she was enrolled at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, where, at Allen's urging, she began to act. Her family moved to Los Angeles in 2005, and in 2006 she was cast in her first television show. In 2007 she appeared as Little Inez Stubbs in the film Hairspray.

Parx was signed to Warner Chappell Music when she was 19. Her first hit as a songwriter was Fifth Harmony's debut single, "Boss." In 2018, three of her co-written songs appeared simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100: "Love Lies" by Khalid and Normani, "Thank U, Next" by Ariana Grande, and "High Hopes" by Panic! at the Disco. She  was nominated for Grammy Awards in the Album of the Year category for her work on Janelle Monae's Dirty Computer (2019) Grande's Thank U, Next (2020) and Justin Bieber's Justice (2022). In 2021, with Dan + Shay's "Glad You Exist", she became the fourth Black woman to write a #1 country song in the history of the genre's airplay charts.

In 2017, Parx debuted as a solo artist with the mixtape, TaylaMade,  It was followed by the full-length albums We Need to Talk (2019), Coping Mechanisms (2020), Many Suns, Many Moons (2024). She also released A Blue State, a three-song collection of covers, in 2020. Each of her albums and the mixtape document her life at the time they were written and recorded, each a continuation of the work that preceded it.

Parx is the founder of TaylaMade, Inc, a  company that acts a an umbrella organization for Parx Publishing, a joint venture with Warner Chappell Music; 3020 Management, a management company for artists, writers, and producers; Trailer Parx, a lifestyle brand; Parx Studios, a creative collective; and TaylaMade Records, an independent record label.

Early life and education
Parx was born Taylor Monet Parks in Dallas, Texas to Allen Parks, a mortgage underwriter, and Theresa Parks, then a member of the military service. She sang before she could speak, and as a young child, her grandmother -- a pianist -- sang lullabies to teach her to harmonize.

Music was a central focus of Parx's upbringing. She sang in church, and took dance, voice, and classical piano lessons. She began writing songs in elementary school; her parents gave her a digital recording station and a keyboard and introduced her to artists including Brian McKnight, Babyface, Angie Stone, and Erykah Badu l She was a fan of Missy Elliott, who introduced Parx to songwriting as a profession through her work with Aaliyah.

Planning to concentrate on dance, Parx began attending Debbie Allen's Dance Academy in 2002. Allen was enthusiastic about Parx's talent, and in addition to dancing, she encouraged her to act.

Early career: Lincoln Center, Hairspray, Nickelodeon
With her parent's permission, Allen brought Parx to Washington, DC, and from the age of nine until she was eleven, she performed at Lincoln Center as the narrator in a stage adaptation of Allen's book, Dancing in the Wings.

At Allen's urging, the Parks family moved to Los Angeles in 2006. During her first year in LA, Parx was cast in Gilmore Girls and Everybody Hates Chris.  Her breakthrough role was as Little Inez Stubbs in the 2007 musical remake of the film Hairspray.   She subsequently appeared on television shows including Nickelodeon's  True Jackson, VP and  Notorious. She met Ariana Grande, who starred in Notorious, at Nickelodeon.

2012-2016: Warner Chappell, "BO$$", "Solo Yo"
Feeling that she had become pigeonholed as an actor, in 2013 Parx decided to take a break from film and television. Refocused on music, she learned to engineer and began studying entertainment law. At 17, she met Babyface, who became a mentor, and at 19, Jon Platt signed her to a publishing deal at Warner Chappel. In a 2021 interview she said that her background as an actor helped her as a songwriter: “The art of songwriting is really being able to say, ‘I'm here with you. I'm listening to you'. It was like this clash of two worlds that I loved."

In 2013, she earned her first album credit as a co-writer and co-producer on the title track of Sevyn Streeter's debut album, Call Me Crazy, But...  She reconnected with Grande, and together with Tommy Brown and Victoria Monét, they wrote "My Everything", the title track of Grande's second album.

Parx wrote and co-wrote songs for (or with) artists including Mariah Carey, Danity Kane, Jennifer Lopez,  and Prince Royce in 2014,  She scored her first big hit as a co-writer and vocal producer on "Boss",  the lead single from Fifth Harmony's debut album; certified platinum in the US, it was on the Billboard Hot 100 or 15 weeks. She voiced Sim in the video game The Sims 4 in 2014, and a year later  voiced Victor Stone in the film Justice League: Gods and Monsters.   In 2015,  her songs were recorded by The Internet, Pentatonix, Red Velvet,  Jason Derulo, and Keyshia Cole, among others, and  she was featured on "Anyway", a track co-written with Chris Brown. She released her first single as a solo artist, "Don't Answer the Phone" in 2015.

Over the next two years, Parx worked wit JoJo, Meghan Trainor, BTS, Demi Lovato, Big Boi,  Christina Aguilera, and Alicia Keys, among others. In April 2106, she had her first #1 hit on the Latin Pop charts with the Sofía Reyes and Prince Royce track  "Solo Yo."

2017-2019:  We Need to Talk, “Thank U, Next”, Dirty Computer
Atlantic Records released Parx's TaylaMade, a mixtape composed of 20 songs and interludes, in 2017. She said she had a feeling of freedom when she stepped into the studio to work on the mixtape, knowing all she had to do was be herself. [1] Khalid, Chiiild, and Syd were featured on TaylaMade. [2]

In addition to her co-writes on records by BTS ("Mic Drop"), Big Boi ("Boomverse") and Majid Jordan ("Asleep,") in 2017. Parx was credited as a producer, composer, and vocal producer on Fifth Harmony's eponymous album and the Demi Lovato album, Tell Me You Love Me.   "Mic Drop" held the #1 spot on the Japanese K-pop charts for six weeks. The following year, she wrote with Anderson .Paak; wrote four songs with Christina Aguilera for Liberation, including "Like I Do" which won a Grammy for Best Rap/Sung performance); and co-wrote the title track of Chloe x Halle's The Kids Are Alright, (which was Grammy-nominated in the Best Contemporary Urban album category.)   She co-wrote four songs for Janelle Monae's  Dirty Computer, taking a "deep creative storytelling dive" to help Monae tell her story.  Parx received her first Grammy nomination in the album of the year category for her work on Dirty Computer.

In October 2018, Parx collaborated with Grande, Monet and Brown on the follow-up to Grande's album Sweetener. They wrote nine songs in a week, including the "internet -melting" title track, "Thank U, Next." Parx urged Grande to use the names of her exes in the song. Released in November 2018, the song hit #1 n 23 countries, becoming a "worldwide cultural moment." Parx also co-wrote "7 Rings", which hit #1 in 28 countries and became one of the best-selling songs in digital music history. Like "Thank U, Next", "7 Rings" debuted at #1 on the Hot 100. [4] In a 2019 interview with the New York Times,  Aguilera noted Parx's ability to take young artists to the "next place in their career" and said she could "hear Tayla in (Grande's) songs".

In addition to voicing AJ for The Walking Dead video game series, Parx had three songs simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2018: "Thank U, Next", "High Hopes" by Panic! at the Disco, and the Khaled featuring Normani track, "Love Lies." “High Hopes,” which Parx began working on at a BMI writing camp in 2016, was Panic! at the Disco’s biggest hit to date, peaking at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. [5] "Love Lies" was a Top 10 hit in seven countries; Vanity Fair included it as one of a group of "genre-averse" songs that defined music in the 2010s.

Parx voiced AJ in The Walking Dead video game series in 2018.

With her debut album, We Need to Talk, released in April 2019, Parx explored genre, gender, and feminism as well as her identity as a queer Black woman. In a review in Vice, Kristin Corry wrote that Parx's habit of "crafting 200 songs a year has made her a painfully concise songwriter, one who carefully crafts every moment of the record’s 15 tracks". The review emphasized Parx's ability to both convey and elicit emotion in her songs: Corry wrote that she could "almost hear Parx's heart breaking" on one track, and that another induced anxiety "like the moment you send a risky text, and see that the other person is typing." [7] Entertainment Weekly [8]described the album as "equal parts swagger and vulnerability." She toured in support of the album, opening for .Paak in Europe and North America and Lizzo in the United States.

2020-present: Coping Mechanisms, Many Moons, Many Suns
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parx built out her home studio to finish her second album, Coping Mechanisms, which she began writing while on tour with Lizzo. During the 2020 presidential election cycle, she recorded  A Blue State, a 3-song EP of cover songs that "captured the truths" of the moment, and "reflected society, how society was feeling." She covered Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On",  Lauryn Hill's "Everything Is Everything" and Kirk Franklin's "I Smile," on A Blue State, which was released on Atlantic in October 2020. In December, she released "Ain't A Lonely Christmas," which was featured in a New York Times story about unconventional Christmas songs.

Parx's second album, Coping Mechanisms, was released in November 2020. In an article in Nylon, Steffanee Wang wrote that with Coping Mechanisms, Parx "turned the demons and emotional baggage that live in her head into vibrant soundscapes of breezy disco, glitchy techno, and percussive pop." The album was accompanied by a 17-minute short film that "unfolds into an unexpected emotional journey." Teen Vogue described the single "Dance Alone" as adding to the "canon of great dance hits."

She continued to write for and with other artists during the lockdown using platforms such as Zoom and TeamViewer. [1] She produced vocals and co-wrote six songs  -- including 34+35  and POV -- for Grande's fifth album Positions,  while observing strict social distancing protocols. She and Grande were rarely in the same room. Parx also worked remotely with Kelsea Ballerini,Troye Sivan, Mickey Guyton and Little Mix,  among others, during the pandemic. She was nominated for a Grammy in the Best R&B Album category for her co-write, "I'm Ready", on John Legend's Bigger Love, [4]and received her fourth Album of the Year Grammy Nomination as a co-writer of  FUBT" on Haim's Women in Music Pt. III. in 2020.'' [4]

In 2021, she become the fourth Black women to write a #1 country hit with "Glad You Exist", a collaboration with Dan + Shay. She received her third Album of the Year Grammy nomination as a songwriter on Justin Beiber's Justice the same year, and in  2022 earned Grammy nominations for Best Contemporary Jazz album for her work on Not Tight, the debut album by Domi and JD Beck s, and Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for Diana Ross's Thank You.

Between 2021 and 2023, she wrote with Kali Uchis, Ellie Goulding, Paloma Mami, and Julia Michaels Monae and Sivan. She also had co-writes on Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia: Moonlight Edition and Got the Beat's "Step Back", among others. She collaborated with Keys on a cover of her 2004 song "If I Ain't Got You",  performed by an orchestra that featured over 70 women of color, for the Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story: Covers From the Netflix Series soundtrack.  She returned to film, portraying Donna Summer in the film Spinning Gold.  She also returned to television, appearing as a judge  on the reality competition The Sims Spark'd. The show reflected the contestant's personal experience with issues related to gender, sexuality, race and class.

Writing when inspiration hit, Parx began working on her third album, Many Moons, Many Suns, just after the release of Coping Mechanisms.   In July 2024, she dropped the "raucous, catchy, empowering, high-energy track" "Era" (featuring Tkay Maidza). The album was released independently on TaylaMade. In Rolling Stone, Parx said: “I'm in my era of owning everything that I am,  If you listen to my lyrics, I’m telling you everything that you need to know about me and what my values are as a as a human. I’m saying that when you go through those dark times, you will finally bounce back and realize that you’re OK.”

TaylaMade, Inc.
Formally launched in 2021, Parx established TaylaMade, Inc. as an umbrella organization for her ventures. It includes Parx Studios, a creative collective that has worked with artists including Lil Nas X, Billie Eilish and Noah Cyrus; and Trailer Parx, a lifestyle brand. TaylaMade Inc. also encompasses Parx Publishing, a joint venture with Warner Chappell; 3020 Management, and TaylaMade Records. Parx Publishing and 3020 Management have signed writers and producers including Grammy nominees Oliver Frid, Kameron Glasper, and Em Walcott.

Advocacy
An advocate for songwriters, Parx is a member of the Mechanical Licensing Collective and a founding member of The Pact, a songwriter's lobby established to end the practice of performers receiving credit and publishing rights for songs they didn't write. In 2019, she organized Burnout Songwriters Camp, an initiative to encourage self-care in the creative community. In 2022, with MNDR, a producer, songwriter and artist, she founded No Name, a writer's camp led by non-male producers. She was appointed to the leadership committee of the Recording Academy’s Black Music Collective in September 2020.

Personal life
Parx lives in Nashville. She identifies as queer. In the mini-documentary, Who Is Tayla Parx?, she described herself as "a dog mom, a sister, a daughter, an executive, a writer and an artist."