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 envisioned all these people who had been admired for having been freaks in their own time, and I saw myself in line with them.
I was just very into things that were the opposite of what other people liked. I didn't want to listen to music that I could find at a friend's house. My identity was really forged around that, and you know, eventually that kind of identity gets dismantled and fed to the vultures. But I was somehow on my own mission.
I've kind of gotten more timid. I used to be fearless - at a certain point I didn't care about what anybody thought. I had all the answers and I could have been as bad as I wanted to be. But nowadays I just want to be good and make people happy.
For me, self-gratification eventually took a backseat to trying to do something collaborative with other people, to trying to make something new.
In the years between 2000 and 2004, I always got the feeling that people were just starting to hear about me and they were all late to the game. I'd be out playing shows for records that I recorded back in 1999 that were just coming out.
Everything comes with hard work. You never get to stop working. I don't see myself ever getting comfortable enough to not have to worry about working.
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.
The music usually occurs to me as a complete sound, and then I have developed the skill of being able to translate that into a fully realized song.
I had my gothy phase, but I was never a troublemaker or anything like that.
The first half of high school, I had a girlfriend, and then the second half I got to know these guys who would just get stoned and jam. I had struck the goth thing by then, but I still thought of myself as Ian Curtis or something.
The world is full of bands and bullshit, and if I'm doing a stupid art project like rock 'n' roll then I want to spare my audience as much as possible.
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.
It's just about pushing yourself to realms that are uncharted. I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing, I don't know if it's any good, I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line. Not just a creative fantasy world or something like that, but a mood too.
I sang "Patience" by Guns N' Roses for my sixth grade talent show and I wanted to be an actor when I was younger. It was all very, very theatrical. It was only later that I separated the two and thought of myself as quite the opposite of an actor.