22-year-old aron! built an audience online, got signed to Verve Records by channeling the American songbook through his original tunes, without ever trying to sound “modern” at all.
He’s a singer, songwriter, guitarist, pianist, and producer — part of a new generation of artists working somewhere between jazz and pop.
When we spoke last year for The Third Story podcast, he told me, “I try to think of myself less as a jazz artist… and more as a songwriter.”
And he believes that we can have nice things. If there is an animating principle behind his songs, it’s simple. “Part of my goal is to… give people nice songs. As many people as possible,” he said.
aron!’s music feels familiar, as if it’s always been there. He writes love songs that could have been written decades ago. And yet, there is something unmistakably now about them.
Take the song “A Table for Two” where he sings: “A table for two just in case she’s running late… just barely missed the train and didn’t text me.”
That detail “she didn’t text me” drops a 21st-century moment into a 20th-century frame. aron! isn’t trying to recreate the past. He’s writing from where he is.
He grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, playing rock guitar, before an older teacher introduced him to jazz harmony and the Great American Songbook. By high school, he was performing Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra songs in retirement homes, learning how these songs connect across generations.
And he was happy. “I was down to just play music at retirement homes and bars… like background music,” he remembered.
Later, he studied classical composition, jazz voice, and film scoring, building the kind of foundation that lets him move easily between styles. But the real breakthrough didn’t come on campus. It came online.
He started posting short performances on social media - just voice, guitar, piano - and found an audience. Once people started listening, he leaned into what felt most natural to him.
aron! is quick to remind you that what might feel like “old” music today was once youth culture. “I think that like back in the forties,” he told me, “the people who were doing this music… weren’t old. They were my age.”
This music only feels nostalgic because we’ve decided it belongs to the past. For him, it doesn’t.
Last year, he released his debut EP, cozy you (and other nice songs) — a collection he recorded with friends, before ever signing a record deal.
It sounds fully formed, and firmly rooted in the romantic tradition. “I’m a lover,” he told me.
His new single, “Wonderful Thing,” is about falling in love, that moment where excitement and fear are happening at the same time. As he puts it, it’s about “catching feelings and choosing to fall anyway.”
Which, in a way, is also what he’s doing with his music: Trusting instinct over strategy. Letting things unfold.
Today, his success might feel inevitable. But he doesn’t take it for granted.
“I've done like so many gigs for so little people… and just kept making music when nobody cared. Except for my parents and my friends…”
The question for aron! is what to do now that his dreams have already come true.
“Everything that I’ve ever wanted has happened… I don’t know where to set the goalposts.”
And that question is both as timeless — and as contemporary — as his music. While he may not know where to set the goalposts, he will set himself up on stage at Mercury Lounge in Manhattan on April 14.
