Beneath the Pages of Aaryan Shah's 'A Love Letter to LA'
Thanks to the additive-laden algorithms of streaming platforms, active music discovery has shifted to autopilot, letting our ears doom-scroll with the same haste as our fingers.
During the early months of 2021, I found myself falling through one such endless pit – a Spotify radio session that bore hours of R&B in its deep variation of shades.
Amongst a bundle of songs that began to form a symbiote of indistinguishable sounds, algorithmic learning spluttered into gear, presenting the work of Aaryan Shah, in particular, a song titled "Better Alone," to break the lull.
My curiosity peaked; I spent the following days peeling away at Aaryan's discography with an unconscious intensity; to this day, it feels a just focus for music so characteristically weighted to a thematically darker tone.
Upon a foundation of piano keys that dip and rise in cinematic fashion, lyrics expressing a broad range of deep emotions build the layers of a discography that, at times, becomes almost uncomfortably raw, yet, these are the bricks with which LA native Aaryan has built his sound.
As the power of TikTok's virality shocked his 2018 track "Renegade" to peak listenership, pushing his discography into the spotlight, Aaryan was busy at work, pulling together the pieces that would form his latest body of work.
Just shy of two weeks following its release, Aaryan and I connected across continents to peel back the layers of the project, revealing the pages beneath A Love Letter to LA.
It's only right that we start at the beginning. In this case, the beginning of the new album. Why did you choose the title A Love Letter to LA, and what does the city mean to you and your journey so far?
I was born and raised in LA. I grew up in the suburbs, kind of on the outskirts of the city.
There’s never really a moment where we start thinking about titles. It's something that marinates for years – in this case, it was around 2018 or 19; Tarantino had released Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I was watching the behind-the-scenes.
I'd heard all the actors talk about this being Tarantino's love letter to LA. Rewatching it with that perspective, I could see it was made by someone with a deep love for this industry and the city. People around the world can understand that, but people that live here know what it looks like to see the 101 freeway with no traffic. Those kinds of ideas had been marinating because this was an album I’d wanted to make for a long time.
As my last project, Codex, finished, the natural next step for me was going to be like this renaissance album. There was a very clear path in terms of what we were going to do and set out to achieve. Everything happened so naturally after Codex as I moved out of my family's home and into the city proper for the first time.
Now that I was living in the heart of LA every day, I got to see the skyline from my room, and I feel like the last however many years that I've been making music has led up to this project. It’s a homecoming in a sense.
That sense of homecoming plays into the characteristic vulnerability and openness of your music. Although both remain present in A Love Letter, there's a distinct sense of maturity from the start to finish of the project. How would you describe that transition?
You know, I could feel a sense of frustration when I was creating Codex. There was just so much anger and angst in a very different way. I don't say this too often, but I really created Codex as like like a suicide note. It felt like there was no way out of this space I was in mentally, and I think in the last 18 months that I've been working on A Love Letter, I've had so much of a transformation as a person.
Speaking to the maturity in this project, a lot of that stems from coming into my own as a young adult. Another is that I feel that I’ve stopped resonating with a lot of my older music, which is super ironic because a lot of that music's getting love right now.
I'm not even talking about “Renegade” blowing up on TikTok. We're just seeing a lot of these older records start coming into their own and getting their flowers, but I don't connect with them the same.
It’s a shame because people are just finding them or have this love for them, and I guess I do too, in a certain way, but there's a lot of immaturity in the way I wrote things. There's a lot of misogyny and ignorance. There's arrogance, these things that you'd expect a 17, 18-year old to write.
I can't beat myself up for too much, but I remember starting this project and telling my collaborators that I need to be a better writer because I’m becoming a better human being, and that has to reflect in my art.
There's just a lot more emotional responsibility that I had to pick up with this project, and at this point in my life, I couldn't make songs about the kind of shit I was doing before because I'm not in that place anymore.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it felt like there was a lot of lament throughout several of the tracks, while at the same time, it feels as if you’re open to and accepting of change. How has creating this project changed your perspective and expectations of yourself and your messaging?
That's a scary thing about growing up. We're constantly trying to evolve. As an artist, you get scared – what if people stop relating to me? What if people created this perception of me, and they're upset that I'm not that anymore?
The shitty thing that happens with a lot of us is that the version that people first knew and loved was a toxic, unhealthy version. While the music was incredible, I don't want to be that person forever.
I guess what clicked for me was I don't think your music has to suffer just because you're changing as a person. If anything, I think it's an opportunity for me to grow artistically, as well. That's where this project did feel like this was the culmination of all of my projects and everything I've been doing for the last eight years
It also feels like the pinnacle for me in this genre, like, I don't think I can ever make another album like this one again. The project starts at a place that's fighting that change and fighting to accept what the city is, what my life is, and you know, what growing up is, and I think by the end, there's this uneasy sense of peace.
For me, that's a nice stepping-off point so that whatever comes next for me is going to be an entirely different Aaryan. The best version of me, at least so far, but that's what it should be.
Do you ever fear that the darker tone and themes within your music are things your fans will lock onto, to the point that when you explore new sounds and narratives, they’ll struggle to accept them?
If there's one thing about my fans, it's that they're open to growing with me. A Love Letter has a lot of those familiar dark tones and the heaviness and catharsis that you would expect from a project of mine, but I think sonically, we pushed it in lots of different ways.
For me to make a project like this and put it out and for it to receive the love that it is receiving shows me that they care a lot more about me and the stories that I'm telling as opposed to something a surface level as wanting a particular sound or genre.
I never take that for granted, but for me to make a song like “Don't Forget to Breathe” on this project and introduce acoustic guitar, which I've never done before. At the end of the day, it may not be what they necessarily gravitate towards, but good music prevails. My fans are in for the ride. It will always be scary to release music, but I know that I'm very, very supported.
Right now, we're no longer chasing the sound; we're trying to pioneer, we're leading this very niche lane, and, again, I’m just really lucky to have fans that believe in me and will follow me there.
There’s an undeniable depth to your music across your projects. On a personal level, do you find therapy in songwriting?
Absolutely. I mean, it's always been therapy. I honestly think writing songs has done more for me than my therapist has, and I promote therapy for everyone. Everybody should be taking therapy, but yeah, writing music has always been a form of escapism.
When I heard people say things like my music saved their lives, I realized that it serves a much higher purpose, and all of that leads to this release, where I needed to make this album to get through the year. I felt very alone. While I'm grateful for my friends and my fans, I would not have made it through without this album.
How does it feel to be able to have such an impact on other people's mental health journeys?
It's surreal every time, you know, it's like, I wrote a very specific story about my own experiences, and sometimes it feels like I'm just putting my shit out on display. Maybe some people listen because they like my music, but I think most people are connecting it to their own lives.
I hear stories about things like how it got someone through their breakup or someone is suicidal, and this walked them off the ledge – that's the part I think my mind has a hard time computing because I know those songs for me, and then you start to realize that I'm doing that for other people, too.
That makes all of it worth it – the ups and downs of the bullshit back-end business, my struggles, all of it.
You touched on this briefly earlier, but A Love Letter certainly has an air of closure. Do you think that's a feeling you'll carry forward to your next project?
I think the last lines of the project are, “The painful truth is I'll always lose, I can't leave you. You'll always be a part of me, you'll always be the death of me.”
That's something that I think is like an end of a chapter, but really like the end of a series of chapters, you know? I've lived the last eight years of my life in album cycle to album cycle, and this time around, I just want to enjoy making music. I just want to create.
Artistically, there's so much to explore, and I think one thing I've been thinking about in the last couple of days is knowing my projects can be very, very heavy. I know they can be a lot to digest, and I appreciate what that does for me, and I appreciate what they do for other people, but I do think as I'm growing, I'm trying to be a better person to the people in my life.
I'm wanting to create something that also becomes a soundtrack to a different part of my life. This project ended at such a beautiful place. So I guess, To start here will be really exciting.
Does this mean that moving forward a brighter version of your music might exist, and; if so, do you have any idea what that might sound like?
I do have an idea of what that sounds like. It's exciting because for the longest, I thought, if there was ever something that just was a little lighter or a bit brighter, it would be corny, but even “Don't Forget to Breathe” and “A Prayer For You” have something about them that feels that the slightest bit lighter.
I've just been working on music for myself right now, exploring things, and I'm excited again – I hope my fans are willing to keep going on this journey with me.
Whenever I come back, whether it's '24 or '25, or whatever, it's going be a very new version of me.
