
“That’s the ultimate goal for me.” Working with Cabello and Gaga, he realized a lifelong goal: writing pop songs for pop stars.

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“I hope to one day be able to do what I do on my own in a room full of people,” says Parker. James Mccauley/ShutterstockĪlong the way, Parker found that maybe solitude isn’t always bliss, and now he wants to take his biggest chance yet: making the leap from studio whiz to in-demand collaborator at the center of the music world. Parker (right) DJ’d with friend and collaborator Ronson at the Glastonbury Festival in England in 2016. “That’s one of the biggest forces of Kanye as an artist,” says Parker. The same year, Parker walked away from a studio session with Kanye West with a co-writing credit on Ye for “ Violent Crimes” and an invaluable lesson: to not be afraid of failure. Travis Scott, a Tame Impala fan and fellow crunchy-guitar enthusiast, enlisted Parker to co-write and produce “ Skeletons” on his chart-topping 2018 album, Astroworld. Suddenly his manager, Spinning Top management company and label founder/CEO Jodie Regan, was fielding calls from artists wanting to link up. Thanks to Currents, he had morphed from indie stoner hero to critically revered writer-producer. (Contrary to even many fans’ belief, Tame Impala is only Parker, not a band, though he performs live with a group of childhood friends.) “It’s me the whole way.” For the next five years, Parker dove into expanding his creative circle.

“When it’s me carrying the torch, there’s no passing of the torch,” he says. Yet just as Parker appeared to reach his prime with Currents, he decided he needed a break from, well, himself. In 2015, Parker put out his masterpiece: Currents, a richly textured, pop-leaning rumination on personal evolution that reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200, spawned twangy streaming hit “ The Less I Know the Better” (still his most popular song on Spotify) and earned a Grammy nomination for best alternative music album. First came the crunchy garage-rock of his 2010 debut, Innerspeaker, then 2012’s Lonerism, with the stomping hit “ Elephant” omnipresent thanks to a BlackBerry commercial synch. It’s Parker’s first album in five years, and the culmination of his slow progression toward mainstream, cross-genre recognition. One thing here is recognizable: a gaping window in the living room, which looks just like the one pictured on the cover of The Slow Rush, Tame Impala’s fourth studio album, out - at last - Feb. 14 on Interscope. “This table is one of the first things we bought.”

(He married Sophie Lawrence, a marketing strategist and ice cream company director, last February.) He chooses a seat at a metal table.

“It has taken us a while to get around to furniture,” says Parker. There’s a bedsheet mangled on the outdoor sofa, as if someone recently slept under the stars. He settles on the sprawling balcony - from which he thinks he has glimpsed Brad Pitt taking walks on the hill below - to watch the sunset, a half-finished bottle of Corona in hand. “Sorry for the mess,” Parker, 34, mumbles politely, traipsing through the master bedroom, which is decorated with only a mattress and a splayed-open suitcase strewn with T-shirts.
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Late-afternoon sunlight beams through the bare windows onto the hardwood floors, where blue masking tape outlines where furniture will go, though a single, rogue bean bag chair seems to scoff at any such ambitions.
