See ARO, a.k.a. AimĂ©e Osbourne, Emerge From Shadows in ‘Shared Something With the Night’
Against a backdrop of shuddering electronic orchestral strings, big-riffing metal guitar and echoey drums, vocalist ARO — whose name is pronounced “arrow” — sings about how a possibly imagined relationship weighs heavy on her soul on her new single, “Shared Something With the Night.”
The track (ARO’s first new music in four years) will appear on her upcoming album Vacare Adamaré and it shows off a duskier, more dramatic side to her aesthetic — especially the shadowy video that shows her singing the song in a church while her masked band rocks out in the dark.
“The song is like a My Bloody Valentine lullaby for the romantically tormented that struggle to sleep at night,” says ARO — a.k.a. Aimée Osbourne, the eldest daughter of Ozzy and Sharon. “I wrote it when I was living in New York and feeling pretty alone and lost. I hadn’t fully connected with who I really was and what that meant yet. Hung up on the outcome of someone else’s approval of me to determine my own self-worth. This weird little song was an outlet for a lot of uncomfortability at the time.”
The singer felt inspired by music that her songwriting collaborator, Jack Dragonetti, presented her with: “[He] had an idea to play the string sample we used backward,” she says. “As soon as I heard it, it was instant. I just immediately came up with the lyrics and melody. Writing is kind of like channeling for me, I never know what’s going to happen or what the track will sound like or what strange sound or sample or chord will resonate. It’s usually a very surprising, cathartic and fun experience.”
ARO plans on releasing Vacare Adamaré in EP-like chapters, built around videos for each song. She also intends to make her visual aesthetic a big part of her live shows when the time comes, with lighting and other projections. “I want the live show to feel like you’re on the haunted mansion ride at Disneyland, with a little Studio 54, a touch of vaudeville and a lot of Blade Runner,” she says. “It will be ghostly and poetic with some neon and hypnotic laser lights to captivate all the senses.”
Osbourne released her first video and single, “Raining Gold,” in 2015, and the track quickly amassed two million YouTube views. In a Rolling Stone interview that year, she joked about how she felt people were surprised that she was putting out music after avoiding the spotlight on The Osbournes. “A lot of people have come up to me at different times and been like, ‘Oh, you’re nice. I thought you must’ve been, like, a hermit or, like, something is wrong with you,'” she said. “I’m like, ‘No, well, maybe, but it’s not that bad.’ It’s nice to feel like I’m not always being given side eyes like, ‘There’s the hidden one that doesn’t like to talk to anyone.'”
These days, Osbourne feels even more confident about her work. “As I grow as a person, so does the music I write,” she says. “I have been in a really great place creatively and personally which helps. I am forever interested and drawn to the unusual and love to combine genres. I definitely surprised myself with some of these new tracks. It was pretty exciting to be able to explore parts of myself creatively I didn’t realize were there. Literally, all I want to do is write and experiment, so I am very much looking forward to continuing to do that with some incredible people.”