Beat Boys: The Rise of the Superstar DJ
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Skrillex performs onstage during Day 3 of Bonnaroo 2012 on June 9, 2012 in Manchester, Tennessee.
Name a DJ from the 1980s. Go ahead, well wait. Fast forward to the 2012 Grammy Awards when electronic music and the men (more on that later) who make it were everywhere. Deadmau5 showed up on the red carpet wearing his trademark mouse head with Skrillexs phone number scrawled across his t-shirt. Producer and DJ Skrillex won not one, but three Grammys. In a special performance superstar DJ David Guetta brought the beats while Lil Wayne and Chris Brown provided vocals.
Far from being a niche market, electronic dance music (EDM) is making inroads into almost every aspect of American life. It has fully infiltrated Top 40 radio. French DJ extraordinaire David Guetta hit No. 1 with the Black Eyed Peas on I Gotta Feeling and Rihanna worked with Scottish DJ Calvin Harris on her hits We Found Love and Where Have You Been. Chart-toppers by Gotye and Adele have been endlessly remixed into dance hits. Deadmau5, both the person and his music, are featured in commercials. Atlantic Records recently relaunched Big Beat, its dance-music imprint, with Skrillex as its cornerstone. The Wall Street Journal estimated that Dutch superstar DJTisto MixMagsGreatest DJ of All Time has an annual income of $20 million. Attendance at the Electric Daisy Carnival, one of the premiere electronic music festivals in the U.S., topped 250,000 last year. Forbes considers Skrillex the 92nd most powerful celebrity in the world, making their list right above 30 Rocks Tina Fey. The rise of the DJ as an artist and the ascension of electronic dance music to the mainstream seems unstoppable.
But just as we are all getting used to having DJs making the music scene, a few acts start to signal what could be the beginning of the end of this generation of electronic dance music mavens. Two days ago, Deadmau5, one of the most famous (and intentionally controversial) DJs of the era, posted an article on Tumblr entitled We All Hit Play. In the article, Deadmau5 (born Joel Zimmerman) claimed that anyone given about 1 hour of instruction can be a DJ, no talent required. He also alleged that when fans pay to see dance musics top-billed acts (himself included) play live its little more than watching them hit play on a mix tape. Then, Swedish House Mafia announced that the tour they are about to go on will be their last. Together the Swedes Axwell, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso sometimes referred to as the Holy Trinity of Dance, are one of dance musics most commercially successful brands and the group was at the front of EDMs American invasion. While the statement was worded vaguely enough for skeptics to wonder if the powerhouse trio would simply change their name, it was a surprising move for one of EDMs biggest acts that will headline a show in Milton Keynes Bowl in England next month. The venue holds 65,000 people. So why are they leaving the game now?
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Are we at a tipping point for electronic music? Maybe. But lets start at the beginning. When did the ascension of EDM in America start? When did it become a phenomenon that would allow a DJ (Deadmau5 again) to close out the Lollapalooza festival or pack a coliseum? Electronic music has been around for awhile. William Orbit was making a name for himself on the dance music scene for more than a decade before becoming known to audiences worldwide for his work on Madonnas 1998 album Ray Of Light. Dutch DJ Tisto has been performing since the mid 1980s, spinning prerecorded music and creating mixes in clubs before headlining Ultra Music Festival last year and raking in the estimated $20 million income. The electronica boom of the late 90s produced artists like Moby, Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Brothers. The Prodigy even managed to produce a No. 1 album Fat of the Land in 1997 that became one of the fastest-selling UK albums of all time.
But earlier iterations of electronic music followed the well-laid track of rock music. They were short, fast and to the point as EDM chronicler Phillip Sherburne says, a dance-music DJ needs hours, not minutes, to get across his or her ideas. Luckily, dance music grew from those early days. While the rave and dance party scene had always been present in Europe, in the 80s and 90s dance music in America was a relatively underground scene. But slowly attendance at festivals like Miamis Winter Music Conference, which was founded in 1985; the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, which started in 2000; and Montreals MUTEK began to grow by the tens of thousands. Indie electronica took off in the new millennium. Acts like Justice from France, Lali Puna from Germany, and Ratatat and The Postal Service from the US paired the soft niceties of indie rock with an foot-pounding electronic beat and helped ignite a new interest in the genre, kickstarting a nostalgia for bands like the Chemical Brothers and, of course, Daft Punk.
Daft Punks groundbreaking set at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival back in 2006 was the defining moment for the new wave of dance music in America. While the duos debut album, Homework, came out in 1997, their turn on the Coachella stage was perfectly timed for American interests. You can watch parts of the performance on YouTube, but the videos only capture the tip of the iceberg, or, more aptly, the tip of the giant light-up pyramid that filled the stage. Daft Punks futuristic sound and wild set made waves at Coachella by tapping into a zeitgeist of music that combined a nostalgia for 90s acts with a burgeoning American dance music scene fueled by crossover indie dance bands like LCD Soundsystem and !!! . That was life-changing for me, said Steve Goodgold, the dance music specialist at the Windish Agency, a booking agency, speaking to the LA Times. Coachella promoter Goldenvoices Senior Vice President Skip Paige agreed. We built that tent for Madonna, and she phoned it in. Daft Punk used it all and blew us away. I talked to them afterwards and they said it was the best set theyd ever played. The performance by the robot-costumed Frenchmen brought cynical concert-goers to tears and the notoriously compliment-stingy site Pitchfork called the performance mindblowing.
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Beat Boys: The Rise of the Superstar DJ