Shining a Light on Ari Abdul
Ari Abdul is entering her reputation era. With her dark tones and euphoric instrumentals, Ari creates a funhouse mirror reflection of what she has seen online, the messed up and the toxic, filtering this through a character that embodies all the parts of yourself you want to kill. In her new EP “CCTV”, her ‘villain arc’ reaches new sonic heights.
Interview Bryson Edward Howe Photography Christian Trippe 
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“Social media is so unpredictable, so I feel like it’s more important—and it's a big lesson I learnt this year—to be proud of what you're proud of, and just love what you make because you make it and not because of the attention that it's gaining." To have this realisation at only twenty-one years old proves how ready, despite describing her journey as an up-and-coming singer/songwriter as “a happy accident”, Ari was for the spotlight. “My entire journey was never planned,” she reveals to me, elaborating on how fast her success came, “Not that I didn't wanna become a musician, but I've never seen it as something that was a reality [but] I never sat down and was like 'okay, I'm gonna study music, I'm gonna find out how to sing, and network, and find out how to get there’, it was more, I was just hanging out with one of my closest friends who produces music and we were bored one random day in 2021 and he was like 'why don't you make a song?' and I was like 'I don't sing'.”
“Music is so different now in the sense where everything can make or not make it based on social media.”
That song became BABYDOLL, Ari’s first song and first huge hit (a rare correlation), which at first sat dormant on TikTok until a few months later, Ari decided to speed it up and repost it, telling me that literally “the next morning I was getting emails from record labels, which was so insane.” The track and its variants have amassed over 250,000,000 streams on Spotify since then and essentially fast-tracked Ari into becoming one of the most promising new pop artists of the year. Ari understands, first-hand, that “music is so different now in the sense where everything can make or not make it based on social media.” And although the platform initially facilitated her success, the flipside is the pressure that comes along with chasing that success. “I could post BABYDOLL, and it could be like a picture of a dog, and it will instantly go viral. And I could post the best song ever and me doing backflips and juggling, and it will get like three likes. For a while, I was like 'this sucks' and be so hard on myself.”
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Denim suit Collusion, Bralet Reineren, Boots Lamoda, Sunglasses Florentina Leitner, Silver earrings Kinks Lab, Ring Maison Lumiere, Ring LAG World
“Making the songs and producing them, I always have this image of what it will look like before the song is even done.”
Denim suit Collusion, Bralet Reineren, Boots Lamoda, Sunglasses Florentina Leitner, Silver earrings Kinks Lab, Ring Maison Lumiere, Ring LAG World
Black & white suit Apujan, Earrings LAG World, Red gloves Handsome Stockholm, Boots KOI
Since then, Ari has been hard at work. Her new EP “CCTV” is out on October 13th and hinting at what to expect from her moving forward, Ari says, “I feel like my sound has changed so much.” Her first EP Fallen Angel was inspired by the sounds Ari grew up hearing in the New York music scene, which she describes as having “definitely a darker sound,” which informed the rouge pop-noir tracks she became famous for. “There's a grit to it in New York,” she explains but is excited to push what defines an Ari Abdul song further into new directions. “BABYDOLL is super dark and gloomy, and kind of sultry in a way. And then you have you have my latest song Bury You, which is super fast drums and is upbeat and is groovy in a way.”
Bury You, a morbidly romantic and lushly produced track that seamlessly blends elements of pop, rock, and electronic, is the only single to be released prior to “CCTV”, wanting her listeners to hear the music for the first time as a complete, whole experience. It came with a music video directed by the creative duo aaro, which Ari says started at the very beginning of the song’s existence. “Making the songs and producing them, I always have this image of what it will look like before the song is even done,” she notes. “The whole time I couldn’t get the image of a person in a straitjacket just going crazy out of my head.”
It's appropriate for someone whose music is so cinematic, and whose inspiration comes from her obsession with all things dark and scary. On CCTV, she teases, "It's pretty much a slasher film, in music.” The second track on the EP, “Who Were You With Last Night”, has Ari’s vocals circling the beat, like someone closing in on their prey, while the final track, “Slow Dancing”, has her voice layered over a tense, thrumming track with lyrics that coil around ideas of fixation and obsession so strong it’s ‘supernatural’. It’s a compelling, cohesive project that feels like more than just a random compilation of singles. Very intentionally, “It tells a story throughout it of someone who is insane, in the most beautiful way.”
“I found a new love for performing and touring and meeting the people who support me the most. It's been a dream honestly.”
When I spoke with Ari, she had just closed out her first tour, finishing in Camden’s iconic venue The Assembly. “It's been so amazing,” she beams. “I found a new love for performing and touring and meeting the people who support me the most. It's been a dream honestly.” But as someone who has found and fostered their success online, singing to a live crowd, and seeing their reaction, is a different measure of success for Ari. “I'd rather have five die-hard people,” she hesitates, disclosing, “I hate using the word 'fans', it just feels wrong […] but I'd rather have five die-hard people who support me and my music and it means something to them and had some impact on them than have a million people who are like ‘oh yeah, Ari, I know that one song BABYDOLL.’” For someone who was jolted so fast into the spotlight, Ari has grasped that the words ‘fans’ and ‘followers’ mean different things than they used to. But moving her sonic worlds from online to the real world seems to be as natural to her as anything else.
Denim suit, Collusion, Bralet, Reineren, Boots, Lamoda, Sunglasses, Florentina Leitner, Silver earrings, Kinks Lab, Ring, Maison Lumiere, Ring, LAG World
TEAM CREDITS
Interview Bryson Edward Howe
Photographer Christian Trippe
Styling Sian O'Donnell
Make-up Claudine Blythman
Hairstylist Ernesto Montenovo
Photo assistant Sophie Bronze
Hair assistant Kay Laeviana
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