Ariel Pink

"Aimed for Kurt Cobain, landed on Morrissey."

Ariel Pink is an American musician, singer, and songwriter whose lo-fi aesthetic and home-recorded albums proved influential to many indie musicians starting in the late 2000s. He is frequently cited as "godfather" of the hypnagogic pop and chillwave movements.

A native of Los Angeles, Pink began experimenting with recording songs on an eight-track Portastudio as a teenager. His early influences were artists such as Michael Jackson, The Cure or R. Stevie Moore. The majority of his recorded output stems from a prolific eight-year period (1996–2003) in which he accumulated over 200 cassette tapes of material. Virtually all of his music released in the 2000s was written and recorded before 2004, the same year he debuted on Animal Collective's Paw Tracks label with The Doldrums (2000), House Arrest (2002) and Worn Copy (2003). The albums immediately attracted a cult following.

Until 2014, his records were usually credited to Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, a solo project sometimes conflated with his touring band. His fame and recognition escalated following his signing to 4AD and the success of his 2010 album Before Today, his first recorded in a professional studio. Pitchfork highlighted the album as "Best New Music" and at the end of the year, Pitchfork crowned its lead single Round and Round the year's best track. He then recorded three more albums – Mature Themes (2012), Pom Pom (2014), and Dedicated to Bobby Jameson (2017) – the last of which was recorded for Mexican Summer. After Pom Pom, Pink also collaborated on a variety of projects by other musicians, including Weyes Blood, Charli XCX, Miley Cyrus or MGMT.

Throughout his career, Pink has been subject to several media controversies stemming from his occasional provocations onstage and in interviews. In 2021 he traveled to Washington D.C. and attended the Donald Trump rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol. Subsequently he lost support from Mexican Summer. Pink then appeared on the Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight. During an appearance on the podcast Wrong Opinion, Pink also stated that he believed the recent presidential election was tampered by the Democratic Party "in some sort of collaboration with China". He opined that Trump represented "an indictment on anything bullshit ... I'm so gay for Trump, I would let him fuck me in the butt."

He then formed a new band, Ariel Pink's Dark Side, with whom he recorded the album The Key of Joy Is Disobedience, the full album was released on vinyl in a limited edition on August 12 and the band seized to exist soon after. In late October 2023 he released a collection of songs Never Made A Demo, Ever. It was released digitally via the Ariel Pink Substack website.