Meet the Writer: Audrey Arellano

Audrey Arellano fell in love with music at a young age.

Growing up, she always heard some music playing around the house. For this reason, her greatest influences were close to home, with her family.

Her parents always had music playing in the car and owned the newest music releases, while her grandparents introduced her to Spanish music at an early age. Her dad would even regularly take her to Tower Records to browse the latest music.

This love of music also extended to knowing how to play guitar, which Audrey still does from time to time with her cherry red electric guitar.

Her first albums were Britney Spears and N’Sync, while her first concert was Green Day during the American Idiot tour with her parents. Ever since middle school, she has had a passion for writing.

Upon seeing the film Brown Sugar, this inspired her to someday work in the music industry and music journalism quickly emerged as her dream job. If she is not writing about music, investigative reporting is another kind of writing that she enjoys.

She has written about Chris Brown and Kali Uchis for CMN, among other topics. 

Audrey does listen to all types of music, but she has a unique list of favorites that include oldies, r & b, and hip-hop. Some preferred artists include Rihanna, Sade, Kendrick Lamar, Billie Holiday, Nas, Gang Starr, and J. Cole. Some newer artists that Audrey has been listening to lately are H.E.R. and Ella Mai.

The music she tends to stay away from are Soundcloud type of rappers like Lil Pump.

“Most of the mainstream hip hop nowadays doesn’t hold the same quality it used to, it just seems very watered down. I like for my music to have a nice beat with great lyricism packed in it.”

When attending live shows, Audrey likes small, intimate venues, including the Roxy, The Fonda, and the Echo. Her favorite music festival was Rock the Bells in 2011, but she has also attended other festivals like Paid Dues and Hard Summer.

When not attending live music shows, she loves to listen to music in her car.

“I’ll always remember watching a documentary on Dr. Dre and him explaining how he likes to put his music to the car test. Since details can be heard more clearly in the car, if he likes how it sounds, it’s complete. That always stuck to me, so whenever I find new music, I always like to play it in the car.”

Her preferred streaming service is Amazon, because it has certain mix tapes that you cannot find on Spotify. With such a strong background in different kinds of music, expect some great things from this CMN music journalist in the future.

You can read all of Audrey’s writing for CMN here.