About Ariane X

Ariane X was born Ariane Sherine in London on 3rd July 1980, to a Parsi (Persian-Indian) mother from East Africa and a white North American father. Ariane’s father was physically violent and emotionally abusive to both her and her younger sister throughout their childhoods, while her mother was critical and repressed and favoured Ariane’s sister. Ariane was also severely bullied at school. She was banned from listening to pop music until the age of 12, when her mother finally relented.

Ariane became obsessed with the music she heard at her grandparents’ house: songs by Michael Jackson and Dave Stewart. The latter was an instrumental called ‘Lily Was Here’, and Ariane’s daughter is now called Lily.

One of the key memories from Ariane’s childhood was attempting to watch Top of the Pops from behind the sofa in the living room, aged seven - Rick Astley was on, singing ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ - and being dragged out of the room by her hair by her mother. Ariane used to read the Britannia Music Club leaflets that came with the Guardian newspaper longingly, wishing she could choose 5 cassette albums as the offer always suggested.

At the age of 12, recently allowed to take solace in music, Ariane watched Top of the Pops every Thursday evening. The song that made her want to be a singer-songwriter was released in January 1993: ‘Ordinary World’ by Duran Duran. She would stay glued to the radio, hoping the song would come on. She became a huge fan of the band, and at the age of 14, she met their guitarist, Warren Cuccurullo, at a gig.

At 16, Ariane was expelled from school for throwing a full Coke can in a bully’s face after she’d spat in Ariane’s lunch - giving her a black eye. The deputy head said to Ariane, ‘You’re going to have to decide what to do with your life now.’ ‘I know what I’m going to do,’ Ariane replied. ‘I’m going to go and find Duran Duran.’

She travelled down to the band’s home studio in Battersea, South London, and explained to Warren, ‘I just got kicked out of school and want to write songs for a living.’ He invited her into the house, beginning a friendship which would last for years. Soon, she became friends with the band’s singer Simon Le Bon too - a friendship which continues to this day. Aged 19, she ended up singing and playing piano at the recording sessions for the Duran Duran album Pop Trash. Read the full story in the Guardian here.

At 19, Ariane began a music production degree at the University of Westminster, and began paid work singing and playing piano at bars and hotels with the UK’s leading entertainment agency, Sternberg Clarke. However, she was discouraged from becoming an artist by the fact that there were no Asian female solo artists in the pop charts. She had a meeting with an A&R man at Warner Records, who was encouraging. He told her to work on her sound and return in a year.

Instead, disheartened and believing her chances of succeeding in the industry were unrealistic, she did work experience at NME and was commissioned to write two album reviews for the magazine - her entry into journalism.

She became a writer, coming second in the BBC Talent New Sitcom Writers’ Award 2002. Firstly, she wrote scripts and jokes for BBC, ITV and Channel 4 television shows for six years, from 2002 to 2008 (My Family, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Countdown, The Story of Tracy Beaker, The New Worst Witch, Space Pirates).

Then, from 2008-present, she wrote columns, features, travel features, book reviews and celebrity interviews for newspapers and magazines including the Guardian (for which she wrote 75 columns), as well as the Observer, Sunday Times, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Esquire, New Statesman, Metro and many other publications.

In 2014, she released a comedy music album, Beautiful Filth, with a band she formed with her ex-husband, called The Lovely Electric. They disbanded after releasing the album.

In 2020, Ariane turned 40, and realised that the dream was still in her: she still wanted to be a pop star. So she set up a home recording studio and started writing songs, each one a letter to her daughter. Electropop with an Indian influence, with several tracks featuring sitar or tabla, they were extremely melodic with big catchy choruses. Themes of the songs ranged from how much she loves her daughter and is glad she will never face racism, to Ariane’s mental illness, suicidal ideation, traumatic childhood and being violently attacked during pregnancy.

Receiving amazing feedback on her tracks, Ariane was soon signed to the little indie record label Banoffeesound.

Most of the songs were written and recorded in 2020 - the delay to the album was due to Ariane trying to lose weight so she could be slim.

But in February 2024, struggling by on Universal Credit, she finally decided to release the album while plus size, reasoning that if Adele had waited to lose the weight, she wouldn’t be where she is now.

Her second, third and fourth albums, each containing 12 songs addressed to ex-boyfriends, are mostly written and recorded, and will be released at six month intervals over the next two years.