Ariel Pink
Ariel Pink
Ariel Marcus Rosenberg, better known by his stage name Ariel Pink, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer based in Los Angeles, California. He is known for his musical eclecticism, influenced by 1970s and 80s pop radio and cassette culture. He first gained recognition after signing to Animal Collective's Paw Tracks label in 2003, where several of his limited-edition home recordings were first reissued. He has since signed to 4AD and released three studio albums on the label...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth24 June 1978
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I do get credit for having a California sound to my music, but I don't think people really know what that means - they think the Beach Boys. I'm thinking more like Sunset Strip in the 1960s and stuff like that.
I think about music in the way that I heard music as a kid - like, Oh my god, there's this weird rubbery ball of undulating things.
As soon as you start to think of that thing that you want to convey or say, you can always just say it much better than you can actually rhyme it or stuff it into a song. It's very, very difficult to just kind of get your point across without going the back way. And you have to be good at that, to not think about things so hard. Let the pen take over, so that it's somebody else's job to dissect the lyrics and tell you what you're all about.
Confidence was never in short supply in my case. If anything, I think I overshot the mark with confidence way too early in my career, and gradually, it's about just getting more humble and wanting to sit down more.
At 35, I'm thinking, Oh, I don't have any of that initial inspiration that I had before, all that angst. I always thought I would burn out very quickly.
As for performing live, I just never imagined how it would work out; for good reason, because it doesn't just work out - not the way you think it will. It's a chance that you take.
I dont think I threw myself into music because I had the best intentions; it was because I was really angry.
You have all these song titles and song time, and you put it in a certain order, and you slap a cover on it. That's a record. That's how I've seen all my records.
When I get to do whatever I want, I'm perfectly happy. I've found that the best scenario is that I just do what I do, and if somebody wants to be part of it, they should work as a conduit for what vision I have. They should help me complete the universe.
When a song blows your mind the first time you hear it, you don't know where it's going. It's blowing your mind as it's unfolding. Then there's that sensation that you're actually going to remember the song.
The early pictures of me you see online, in just T-shirts and hoodies - I'm still that guy with the hoodie. But what you don't get to see in most of those pics is that I had these red clogs on that had, like, eyeballs on the ends of them that I drew on. That speaks a little bit more to what I was going after, stylistically.
That's one thing I don't think people consider nowadays. They want to believe in the importance of marriage, boil it down to just a signature on a legal document. But that's exactly what it is. If not, why not just get married without one?
Maybe by making people feel uncomfortable, I tap into that uncanny quality that is a part of the scariest, weirdest things that you remember happening to you when you were a kid.
I was actually under a lot of heaviness when I was younger. I thought of myself as an old soul. I was very obsessed with death. Basically, I didn't really have a youth - I sublimated all that into my identity and my music.