That winsome formula, although particularly compelling from Grande, can be traced back through recent pop history on a global scale: There are elements of the sound in a K-pop track by the girl group Red Velvet from 2015; a JoJo kiss-off from 2016; a Fifth Harmony single from 2017; and a Grammy-nominated Christina Aguilera number from last year. Even “High Hopes,” the sugary comeback hit from pop-punk survivors Panic! at the Disco, which peaked at No. 4 in January, shares some of that DNA in its ecstatic vocal runs and melodic precision.
The common link comes via songwriter Taylor Parks, an ebullient 25-year-old former child actress with a brightly dyed bob and an air of benevolent mischief, who was credited on each. Known in the industry as a top-liner, Parks, who performs as Tayla Parx, contributes melodic and lyrical ideas to some of the biggest artists in the world, and those aspiring to be.
For the past few years, she has done so quietly, cutting a meticulous yet low-key warpath through popular music on a personal quest to land a No. 1 single on every genre chart — a lofty goal that’s no longer far-fetched.
“I only have a few more to go,” Parx said recently, while putting the finishing touches on her own debut album. “I need a country, I need a gospel, and I need a hip-hop.” She tackled Latin pop back in 2016, before its crossover explosion, and Nashville was already in her sights, she teased, after recent interest from Kacey Musgraves and Keith Urban.
They are not the only ones to take notice. Parx was credited as a co-writer on half of Grande’s blockbuster “Thank U, Next” album, which rebooted the pop singer’s sound and public narrative. For Parx, the release worked as a springboard from workaday writer to A-list studio presence and, ideally, viable solo artist — an elusive final hurdle for many young female songwriters, from Ester Dean and Jessie J to Julia Michaels and Starrah.
“Most songwriters fail to become an artist the same size they were a songwriter,” acknowledged Richie Kipp, one of Parx’s managers. “But I’ve never seen anyone wired like Tayla.”
A Texas-born protégée of actress and choreographer Debbie Allen, Parx moved with her family — a mother who worked in software and a father in mortgage underwriting — to Los Angeles to pursue show business.
She played Little Inez Stubbs in the 2007 film adaptation of “Hairspray” before landing a few small television parts, including on Nickelodeon shows where she first crossed paths with Grande. Although they kept in touch intermittently on AOL Instant Messenger — and Parx helped write the title track for Grande’s second album, “My Everything,” in 2014 — the women did not really reconnect in person until the making of “Thank U, Next” late last year.
In the meantime, Parx had clocked studio time with Babyface, contributed to a Mariah Carey divorce anthem while still a teenager and become a voice actor on “The Sims” and “The Walking Dead” video games. (Parx’s song “Me vs. Us” has a Simlish version, sung entirely in the fictional language.)
Now, with Grande in her corner and on her résumé, Parx is trying to balance studio sessions for hit-seeking artists like Sam Smith, Haim and Dua Lipa with signing artists and producers of her own, going on acting auditions, working on a screenplay for an animated film, conceiving a clothing brand and promoting her Atlantic Records release, “We Need to Talk.” The new album, like Parx’s best hits, is playful and conversational, blending pop, R&B; and traces of rap with plenty of Grande-esque high notes.
“It’s been nuts,” Parx said. “I really had to jump through all the hoops of fire. First of all, being black, and then being a woman, and then being a young black woman. But we got through all of them.” (A recent study by the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that of the 633 songs to chart from 2012 through 2018, just 12.3 percent included female songwriters.)
In addition to her contagious pluck and facility across genres, Parx credited her listening skills and discretion as crucial to endearing her to major artists. “There are a lot of things in my vault from the biggest stars in the world,” she said. “I would never betray them or take advantage of that trust.”
Her acting background helps, too. “When I write these songs after having conversations with artists,” she said, “I’m embodying that and becoming them in that moment.”
Aguilera compared Parx to a little sister, one who introduced her to “Black Mirror” and Instagram stories, while also gamely battling Aguilera’s children with Nerf guns. “She just has this natural personable quality that makes you feel at ease,” Aguilera said. “You want to be in a room with her.”
As a former child performer herself, Aguilera said she was thrilled with the recognition now heading Parx’s way after her work with Grande. “I can hear Tayla in those songs, for sure,” Aguilera said, praising Parx’s ability to collaborate with “another young artist and really take them to that next place in their career, where you’re like: ‘Oh, wait, who is this again? Ariana Grande!?’”
Parx was brought into the “Thank U, Next” sessions in October by her longtime friends and collaborators Victoria Monét, another top-liner, and producer Tommy Brown, or TB Hits, who had both worked on Grande’s four previous albums.
Grande had just released the album “Sweetener” that August, but with the death of her ex-boyfriend, rapper Mac Miller, and the flame-out of her high-profile romance with Pete Davidson of “Saturday Night Live,” she had plenty more material to work through.
“We were kind of there through the breakup and the makeup and the breakup again,” Parx said, “which is why records like ‘NASA’ and ‘Make Up’ came.”
The group wrote about nine songs in a week, six of which ended up making the “Thank U, Next” album. But none were as crucial as the title track, which existed in multiple versions, including the internet-melting one where Grande addressed her exes by name.
“They all felt like the one until we got to ‘Thank U, Next,’ and then we were like, ‘This is the one one!’” Parx said.
Brown recalled Parx as an advocate for specificity. “She was a big supporter of using the names,” he said, citing her tendency to speak her mind. “All big stars need people who are honest with them,” Brown added. “Too many times these people are lied to or just agreed with. Tayla’s not going to do that.”
Parx noted that she, Monét and Grande were not only collaborators but also peers and friends. “For me to connect to a young female is a completely different perspective than when you have a Max Martin talking to a young female,” she said, referring to the longtime pop hitmaker.
As for the criticism that Grande received about appropriating black music and style, Parx brushed it off, noting that many critics failed to recognize the pop star’s black collaborators. “She’s actually supporting the black producers and writers that she works with more than some of the black artists that I’ve worked with,” Parx said.
“I think the free exchange is important for the evolution of music,” she added. “If we didn’t take from each other, genre-wise, everything would sound the same. As long as the proper credit is given, that’s the most important thing.”
Parx’s technical skills, like a knack for arranging and producing vocals, also help set her apart. “I might find a breath or a word that I like — it’s like surgery,” she said of the process, which can include coaching singers toward certain emotional registers and chopping up different takes into fine-tuned final versions.
As she spoke, Parx was using one ear to track the progress of her own vocals on a song that needed to be finished for her album. In the editing process, a line that should have been “teach me” had morphed into “tease me.”
“It sounds like I have a lisp,” she told her audio engineer, barely missing a beat in conversation.
Seeming genuinely sated by all of the success coming her way, Parx was typically buoyant about the possibility that “We Need to Talk” may not be her own commercial breakthrough, but merely another baby step in an atypical career.
“That would be very ungrateful of me to look at the records that I’ve broken, the career that I’ve had from 9 until now, and measure my success against someone else’s,” she said, flashing her disarmingly confident grin. “There’s a lot of things that the biggest artists in the world haven’t done that I’ve done.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.