Hey everyone, Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. And I've decided I have time today.

If you're a longtime music fan and you know you're really in these music trenches for years, chances are at some point you are going to see some of your favorites fall off, experience embarrassing moments where, you know, your, your view of them and your respect for them sort of just melts away completely. Yeah, this is somehow not a Kanye West.

No, instead I am talking about the legendary, and I will say legendary here, songwriter, multi instrumentalist, and producer Ariel Pink. A guy who, no matter which way you cut it, you have to acknowledge just how influential his sound was in the world of lo fi music, of hypnagogic pop.

For a long time, despite some dicey performances and problematic comments here and there, he remained one of the most beloved figures in the indie scene. Even if at his peak his success wasn't mainstream, he was still very much a musician's musician and again saw a lot of respect and working opportunities from his fellow creators.

But all of that came crashing down very quickly one day, not too long ago – January 6, 2021 – which, if you need a historical reminder, that was the day the Capitol got stormed and all of those MAGA Trump psychopaths thought the election was stolen, tried to take it back violently. And it should be acknowledged that the impact of the stay reaches far beyond outside of just the political world.

In fact, there were some music related headlines that came out of this event, most specifically around certain musicians who showed up to this thing. Mr. Pink here ended up being one of those artists in attendance. Though I will say specifically and acknowledge again, as I have in the past, Ariel has claimed he did not actually go to the Capitol riot itself, but just sort of attended the Trump speech beforehand, which he seems to think should have exonerated him in that moment.

However, personally, I feel like that's damning enough. Trump's actions on that day were blatantly anti Democratic. The lies he told up until that point were very clearly lies. And you would have to be a total fucking idiot or an out and out fascist to believe that they were true or endorse them in any way.

But yeah, pretty much after he came forward and acknowledged he was at this speech, he was dropped by his label, lost a lot of connections and friends and respect in the music industry. To be completely honest, I'm kind of sorry it went down this way. Not because attending this thing was heinous in and of itself. It was. But not too long after this, some very Damning allegations and legal documents came out that painted Ariel in a really horrific light.

By the time a lot of this came out, Ariel had already been canceled in the eyes of many. So there wasn't a whole lot of attention paid to this. And as a result, it's allowed him to sort of go on social media and appear on podcast after podcast after podcast talking about how he's not allowed to be a professional musician anymore, and he's basically blackballed because of his political ideology.

So why am I talking about this now? Because yes, at this point it is true that his music career, or whatever it could have possibly been, is pretty much totally dead at this point. My reasoning is I used to be a massive open fan of this guy and still think a lot of his records to this day are really impressive and it's just been been embarrassing and frankly annoying to hold that fact in my head while simultaneously dealing with him being one of my most obnoxious reply guys whose embarrassing and self destructive crash out has been non stop ever since he got canceled.

Now, a lot of this has manifested in him like tweeting at me over and over and over and over and over for years now and for the most part I've been ignoring it because honestly, I really have no need or responsibility to respond to anything that he's saying. Even with him obsessing over me as if I'm singularly responsible for him not being popular, successful, or famous anymore.

Like the one big video I've done on this topic came after this whole fallout occurred in the first place. And I've never known the guy personally. I've only commented on his music as an outsider and as a consumer of it. Surely he has lost much more significant connections in the music industry than, you know, just like my respect as a fan. Why he's not more openly preoccupied with those connections and relationships? I don't know.

But yeah, sadly this guy can't seem to shut the fuck up about me. And now this obsession is being geared toward my actual fans and viewers because Ariel seems to have found a way to dig the hole that he's in even deeper and for a couple of days has been like openly feuding with people on my subreddit, I guess over the fact that he recently put out a new song which features a collaboration with somebody who he claims is his girlfriend.

I don't recommend you go look up the track. It's absolute dog shit. And actually part of the reason I feel safe talking to you about Ariel and his music and the state of his career right now is that the music he's been putting out as of late has been so fucking horrible that there's no possible way I could be pushing anyone in his direction and have them come away impressed with what they're hearing. In fact, this new track that I'm talking about is so terrible, even his hardcore fans who are still riding with him up until this point are shitting on it on YouTube.

But anyway, I guess there are some people who were aware of this woman's social media history and posts and so on and so forth. Either, again, were aware of this when they saw the crossover and collaboration on the song, or maybe did a little digging and found that she has legitimately posted some pretty heinous and offensive awful things. And of course, my subreddit being a place now where it's just pretty much a general music discussion subreddit. Rarely am I the topic of a lot of the discourse going on there. And even when I am the focus of the discourse over there, it's not always positive. Like, I have no say over whether or not people over there hate me or dislike me. And yet Ariel thinks I have, like, some kind of influence over what my subreddit is doing just because my name is on it. Further proving this guy is devolving into a Fox News grandpa who doesn't know how the Internet works.

So anyway, Ariel, the current state of his career, his connections with this person, things she's posted, how offensive it is, so and so forth. This has been a hot topic of discussion in a post on the subreddit and in the comments of this subreddit. He has been totally fucking crashing out and going nuts, asking me on social media about whether or not I should verify the claims against him and his girlfriend, which I'm not making them. It's not me, it's somebody else. It's other people talking about this.

So, yeah, I just want to remind you guys, as embarrassing as a lot of what Kanye has been doing over the past year is, legitimately, there are crash outs happening in the music industry at multiple levels. Even when you're a lo fi indie pop superstar who is completely washed, can't write a good song now to save his life, and would rather do podcasts with total fucking losers than do anything to actually improve his art or his image.

But yeah, I'm gonna leave that there. Let me know what you think about all this mess in the comments. I'm sure you will.

Anthony Fantano. Totally cringe. Crash out. Forever.