ARDN, is bronze the new gold?

Hunter Pratt, Staff Writer

Let’s talk about the Edmonton-raised ARDN. His name may mean bronze in Hebrew, but his music doesn’t deserve third place.

ARDN has been making waves in the music industry, expanding outside of our northern ecosystem. His first official project, Goodwill, came out in 2018, and to ARDN’s own surprise, it was created with GarageBand.

“I couldn’t even tell you how I made Goodwill because I’m still not good at engineering,” says ARDN. “I listen back and know it’s poor quality, but I’m still proud of what came out of it.” 

Once he saw the talent within himself, the sound and storytelling of ARDN’s music only grew from there.

ARDN’s musical style is personal, filled with charm and vulnerabilities that paint a picture for his listeners. The underlying themes in his music range from relationship roadblocks to navigating grief. All of these raw emotions are then wrapped into a bow with melodic beats and catchy hooks that tie the knot.

“Til’ the morning” is regarded as the first song that grabbed people’s attention, and the artist credits social media for getting him to that place. 

“Social media has changed my life. It completely changed the trajectory of my music and career,” he says. “It allowed me to break out of Edmonton and actually establish and solidify a real fan base.” 

Beyond the exposure ARDN has gained through social media, opening for Isaiah Rashad on tour gave him even greater visibility, and a valuable opportunity to develop his stage presence. 

ARDN found out that he would be accompanying Rashad on tour less than 10 days before it started, with very little performing experience to lean on. Therefore, at the first show of the tour, the nerves struck. Luckily, ARDN had a fellow artist to lean on for advice.

“I was super nervous, I remember my first show in Vancouver, my stomach was going up and down before going on stage. But then [Isaiah] was telling me stories about when he first started touring and what he would do when he was nervous, so that kind of calmed me down,” he says. 

With every show performed, ARDN associates each one with training in the gym—with progress comes repetition. There is no bargaining when it comes to sharing your music with a live audience, and he explains that stage fright was a conflict of mental strength. 

“If I want to be an artist, this is something I’m going to have to overcome and literally just throwing myself up on stage and experiencing different things is what helped me to become a performer,” he says. 

Eventually, ARDN’s stage fright passed, and he joined Rashad on tour once again, this time in Europe. He refers to the opportunity as “the craziest thing I’ve experienced in my career so far.” 

Filled with many memories and anecdotes, ARDN hopes to top his touring experience in the future, this time being the headliner. 

Stage fright wasn’t the only conflict he had to face, however, with his next obstacle being a tough crowd. ARDN revisits a time where the crowd he was performing for booed him, but how he never let it get in the way of putting on a good show in the midst of adversity. 

“It created a reverse effect in me to lock in, and it was to this day one of my best performances,” he says. Perhaps a tough crowd is what he needed to fully conceptualise himself as a performer, rolling with the punches and pushing back to his full potential. 

Opportunity rings for the artist, sliding on features from SiR to Oblé Reed.

“To be able to enjoy music and look up to certain artists and get the opportunity to work with them, it’s crazy,” says ARDN. 

A prominent collaboration that ARDN recently put out is “Retail Therapy” with Férina, a song with a 2000’s nostalgia that already has 1.5 million streams on Spotify just a month after its release. 

It stands to reason why ARDN switched from using Spotify to Apple Music, as streaming numbers are so vital to keep musicians at a constant state of validation. For the sake of his mental health, he made the switch to prevent him from associating his music with the numbers that Spotify presents.

“When you’re an artist, everything is by numbers, you’ve got to post on TikTok, you’ve got to gain followers. It’s all about streams,” he says.“So I think listening to music on my own personal time and being able to enjoy music for just music and not think about numbers is what made me enjoy Apple Music more.”

ARDN has gone through a journey in the music industry, moving from being signed to a label to branching out as an independent artist. He has refined his music career into one full of life lessons on managing his own music and navigating the music industry.

 A huge perk of going independent for ARDN is the freedom to explore his creativity and self-direction. 

“The freedom of your own creative direction is what I enjoy about music. I don’t think music should come with restraints,” he says. 

Having freedom has led him to put out two projects in a mere seven months, but what’s after this? Though ARDN has plenty of music in store for the future, his current focus is to keep enjoying the music in hopes of generating buzz for his future releases. 

“I’m just having fun with music, and keeping people excited with one song at a time.”