“Black Dog” by Arlo Parks

"Black Dog" takes its name from Winston Churchill's term for depression, and Arlo Parks, the British singer and poet, aims it squarely at mental health; it sits on her first album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, from 2021. She wrote it with GianLuca Buccellati, who produced it and plays drums, bass, guitar and synthesizer, with David Wrench mixing. Parks has said she meant it as company for anyone going through a hard time, something to make them feel less isolated and to open up talk about how common mental health problems are.

It first came out on a double-sided single with "Eugene", a month before she became an ambassador for the charity Campaign Against Living Miserably. BBC Radio 1 put it on its A List in July 2020, her first mainstream UK airplay, and NME placed it fourth among that year's best songs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.