Aiden Kroll: The Next Steps
Photo and cover photo by: Nick Whitmill
Aiden Kroll might be calm and steady, but that doesn’t mean he’s afraid to adapt. With over 2.8M followers on TikTok and more than 1.2M followers on Instagram, he’s carved out his own little corner of the internet through his steady stream of hypnotic guitar covers. The same covers have caught the attention of several artists: KATSEYE’s Manon left a comment on one of his videos, Sabrina Carpenter reposted one of his covers, and Keshi even brought him out on stage.
He’s so in tune with music that everything seems instinctive, almost second nature. “I pick the song and know which part I’m going to play over. I spend around 15 minutes jamming over it and coming up with something so that I know the structure of what I’m going to play. When I arrive at something that feels good, I know that’s what I’m going to post.”
Kroll also isn’t afraid to revisit covers he’s already posted. “A lot of the ones I pick, I just love playing over and over. So I’ll do them again either slightly differently or I’ll come up with something completely new.” After posting the new version, he’ll compare the two and admit that the responses aren’t always what he was expecting. “Sometimes, some of the old versions that I thought weren’t as good or were simpler do better than the ones I thought were more interesting and complex.” And being receptive is important, “I’ve listened to the advice in my comments…they can be really right.” This is especially true of some song requests he gets. There are some that he felt “originally, right off the bat, I wouldn’t have picked the song. So it’s good to get feedback.”
But Kroll is clear that while he’s grateful for the love he gets on his covers, social media isn’t something he wants to do forever. “I want to dive into original music. I’m really excited about that.” Right now, he’s focused on figuring out a way to balance showcasing his music without taking the attention away from the covers that people follow him for. So far? He’s started to sing in some of his covers and promoted his debut single the same way — as if it were just another cover.
“Obviously, you can't make them care about your artist project, but introducing it so that it's there if people are interested in it. Hopefully, the music speaks for itself.”
Expanding Kroll’s strong online presence into the real world, he’s starting to perform live. In December, he played a free showcase as part of We Found New Music’s Artist Discovery Concert Series, marking only his second live performance as a solo artist. His first came two months earlier when he received the opportunity to be Noah Rinker’s opener at the Troubadour.
Both sets provided an eye-opening experience. As an opener, “nobody knows the songs I'm playing because I only had one song at that point and still haven't released [the other] songs.” Meanwhile, the showcase was in a much smaller space. “Some people were there specifically for me. It's more intimate. So having both of those as my first two [solo performances] is cool.”
Hopefully, longer sets from Kroll will come soon as he works on releasing more original music. He spent the past year going through “a speed dating process of meeting producers and songwriters that every artist has probably gone through.”
Experimenting with others helps keep him open-minded. “I've been surprised by ideas that I thought wouldn't work.”
For his first single, “White Flag,” Kroll worked closely with songwriters Jamie Gelman and Jack Koplin. “They’re two of some of my favorite people I’ve been able to work with so far. I plan on doing more with them.” Through working with them, he has refined his own creative process. “There are little things I picked up here and there that I can add to my own process when I’m making music.”
He understands that artistry is an ever-changing journey. “There may be a sound for you in one period of your life, and then you either grow out of that or pivot into something that makes more sense. I’m not tied to anything specific as long as it includes the electric guitar.”
Looking ahead, he shares that he’s been working towards an EP, but he isn’t trying to rush a specific project release. For him, quality is critical. “If they don't feel cohesive, I'll release some singles until I feel like I have a set of songs that are cohesive.”
