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It’s 9 p.m. on a Monday when Subtronics materializes on Zoom. In the last 72 hours, the artist born Jesse Kardon played his first set on the main stage at EDC Las Vegas, bringing a crowd of roughly 80,000 on the sonic rollercoaster ride that his thunderous dubstep facilitates. The set included a very special guest: Kardon’s wife Sonya Broner, who produces music as Level Up and who appeared alongside her husband for their debut as Leveltronics.

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Before the show, he wrote that his 15-year career had been leading up to this mainstage performance. Talking to Billboard 72 hours later, he still seems floored that it happened.

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“It’s one of those things where it’s like, ‘As respectfully as possible, what the f— am I doing here?’” he says with a laugh, the lights of his studio behind him giving the room a pink glow while his dog, Ellie, casually wanders past.

But there’s no rest for the in-demand. After EDC, Kardon flew across the country to Alabama’s Hangout Music Festival, where he was the Sunday night (May 19) headliner on the festival’s electronic-focused stage. These sets and other forthcoming summer dates, which include sets at Electric Forest and Hard Summer, follow a 16-date spring tour that included shows at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena and Brooklyn’s massive Barclays Center. Meanwhile, the tour behind the 2023 Subtronics album Antifractals grossed $5.2 million and sold 115,000 tickets over 40 shows, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore. (Boxscore also reports that the rest of Subtronics’ 2023 tour dates grossed another $4 million and sold another 71,000 tickets.)

If that sounds like a lot, consider that the producer basically did it all again this year, releasing his LP Tesseract this past February. The album is a dubstep master class, deftly maneuvering between bass as sharp as steel and softer, headier, more celestial flourishes, altogether emphasizing that the hard-hitting genre can still be cerebral. His shows behind the LP continue Thursday night (May 23) with the first of a two-night headlining run at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater.

Here, Kardon talks about his career, the schisms that exist between electronic music genres and more.

1. Where are you in the world right now, and what is the setting like?

I am home in my studio. I just got home today. Things are really calm. I’m recuperating. I’m going to quickly work on my set tonight a little bit. I’m feeling really grateful and a bit emotionally hungover from EDC, because it was such a big thing. There’s so much preparation for Red Rocks and EDC. This is literally the eye of the storm.

2. What is the first album or piece of music you bought for yourself and what was the medium?

OK Computer by Radiohead. It was a CD, and I played it on my Discman. I can’t remember if I saved up allowance money, or if I got it as a birthday gift. The second thing that comes to mind is when I was 12 or 13 and figured out Limewire. I downloaded a bunch of alternative rock stuff on the Internet, like Mars Volta and stuff like that.

3. What did your parents do for a living when you were a kid, and what do they think of what you do now?

My dad is actually in the music industry. He’s an independent concert promoter. Now he’s a talent buyer for various independent venues around Philadelphia. Before I was born, he was a tour manager for a band called The Hooters and would travel all over Europe. When I was born, he settled down and opened a small independent music venue called The Point where acts like Tegan & Sara played before they got big.

4. So you were raised in music?

I was raised in music for sure, but he works with primarily folk music and Americana. My mom has always had various office jobs. The longest one I remember was an outpatient clinic for young children with mental and physical disabilities. She worked as the main office manager in a small private practice. They’re super supportive. When I turned 5, my dad was like, “OK, which instrument do you want to play?” I play drums, and that was the forefront of my life until I started making music electronically.

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5. Maybe there’s no such thing, but what is a typical day for you?

It’s so interesting. I have two extremely different lifestyles, but they both repeat exactly the same. Monday through Thursday when I’m home, I wake up around 12, have coffee, brush my teeth, shower, walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes, shower, have breakfast with my wife and I always do sourdough and egg over medium with pesto and guac with cauliflower hash browns. We walk our dog, and then I sit down to start working on music at probably 2 or 3 and work on music the entire day. Normally around 5 or 6, we feed and walk [our dog] Ellie. Around 11 or 12, we’ll be like “OK, let’s do dinner.” Then normally, we’ll either watch a movie, or if it’s really stressful, get back to work on music for a little bit. Then we just shower and go to bed. It’s pretty much exactly that day, every single day.

6. Then what’s it like when you’re on the road?

On the road, I think it’s probably the pretty standard DJ cycle of wake up in hotel, go to airport, hopefully no layovers, get to next city, get to next hotel, obsess over set, overthink random transitions and details that no one’s going to notice. Go to the site, play Steam Deck in the greenroom until I go to the stage, play the stage, then go back to the hotel, go to sleep and rinse and repeat.

7. How do you make part of the job sustainable for yourself?

One of the big things is that I’m not much of a partier. I’ve never really been a party kid. I’m definitely more a nerdy individual. I like to play video games and be on the Internet. More recently, I’ve been learning to clock out, so to speak. To be like, “This is my identity, but I should clock out and resume normal human life.”

8. You’ve previously mentioned being anxious. How do you manage your anxiety?

I actually started therapy a few months ago. It’s ironic, because I’ve been in and out of therapy and stuff like it for my entire life, for anxiety. So that, breathing exercises, reassurance. My wife is my rock. We have a group chat with another DJ and his partner. We vent constantly and are just petty in there. So venting frequently, breathing exercises, food, creature comforts, getting enough rest and recognizing when the voices in my head are being really mean. I realized, “Oh my god, I can be super mean to myself and not even realize it.” That’s so unnecessary. So various different exercises where I go through and remind myself that things are good, and that I’ve worked hard. But I think more than anything it’s probably just talking to my wife, Sonia, and creature comforts like nicotine, caffeine and marijuana.

8. You and your wife performed together last weekend at EDC as Leveltronics. How do you successfully launch a project like that with your partner?

It definitely came organically, because we both work on music all day, every day and our studios are next to each other. We both got offstage and were blown away at how easy and awesome it was.

[We both have] a really intense, involved, busy and complicated way of mixing. So every time either of us has ever done a back to back, we struggle. It’s hard. I have so many back to back memories where, because I mix in this particular way, it’s really challenging. The whole time I’m overthinking and I’m watching what they’re doing like, “Oh, they just missed that cue.” So being able to DJ with someone who does the exact same thing was like mixing in the mirror. It was so easy and so effortless. We kept having flashbacks to all the difficult back to backs and how amazing this one was.

9. Ahead of your EDC set you wrote on Instagram that your 15-year career has been leading up to that moment. What did playing the main stage at that festival mean to you?

It’s so hard to wrap my head around it, but it’s really validating, and it’s really self-affirming, and it’s unbelievably surreal. It is so beyond my wildest dreams. When I first downloaded Ableton, I just wanted to get good at making weird, niche music in a not popular genre I was interested in. I had no intention of being an artist in that genre, let alone a professional artist, let alone successful enough to play shows, let alone headline the biggest one. I say this a lot, but it’s one of those things where it’s like, “As respectfully as possible, what the f— am I doing here?” I’m floored with gratitude, flooded with emotion. I just can’t believe it.

10. What was going through your head on that stage playing for a crowd that size?

I’m honestly grateful that it’s taken this long to get there, because I felt experienced and seasoned enough that as soon as I was mixing, I just switched into the mode. There were a lot of moments of like, “Holy sh–, this is the big one.” But then also autopilot kicks in. … But I was definitely hit with frequent waves of, “Dude, this is main stage EDC. What the f—?”

Subtronics

OHDAGYO

11. I feel like bass music is still often positioned as underground. As you’re saying, you’re playing the main stage at EDC and going on these massive tours that sell a lot of tickets and make a lot of money. This is not a small thing. What’s your take on how bass music is positioned in dance music culture?

It’s really interesting, because when you’re really in it and the tunnel vision is going, dubstep feels like it can be massive. We have Lost Lands and Seven Lions playing Ultra main stage and there’s dubstep on the EDC main stage. I’m playing riddim edits in front of 80,000 people. Like what?

So it feels massive, but then there’s perspective shifters. I’ll never forget when I first went to Lollapalooza and saw a crowd of a major pop star and the scale that’s on. Or watching the Billie Eilish documentary and seeing the grandness of that and how massive it is. I’ve had many times where my perspective has been changed, and I’m like, “We really ain’t sh–.” This is niche, small stuff for sure. It almost feels like there’s a responsibility to push dubstep, because we’re nearing the ceiling of how far dubstep has gone, and we want to push it farther.

12. How much bigger do you think it can get?

It’s so interesting, because at the same time, you see the term “big EDM” on Twitter, where there’s been this internal schism, where people think the agency artists that play the big festivals have become the corporate mainstream thing, and then there’s this underground resurgence thing. But [look at it more broadly] and what is labeled as “big EDM” is still more underdog and underground. Compared to the rest of EDM as a whole, bass music is tiny in the grand scheme. And then dance music compared to all of music is tiny.

13. Say more about that.

It’s really easy for perspective to warp on how big or small stuff really is. But what I definitely remind myself of is that I’m unbelievably lucky to have made a career in dubstep. I’m so excited for how big it has gotten and how many fans there are, but in the grand scheme it’s definitely a niche. To that end, as someone who had under 10,000 followers for the longest time, I feel a tremendous responsibility to put on as many small, underground artists as I can possibly help support.

14. You mentioned the schisms within the electronic scene itself, and it’s such a broad world and spectrum of sound, so it often feels ridiculous to even compare things that are going on under the broad umbrella term. But then you have all of these different types of electronic artists playing under a banner like EDC or some such festival, so there’s obviously major connective tissue. Do you experience the fractured-ness or a sort of separateness between the genres?

What’s interesting is that in real life, no. Barely. What’s so surprising when you put your phone down is how much love there is between genres. I believe there’s good examples of good music in every single genre and there’s great examples of terrible music in every single genre. So I love everything, and I think a lot of our fans love everything and a lot of other genre fans love everything.

We noticed this when we were working with John Summit and other artists that do something completely different, but such a large percentage of both of our fanbases are really excited to see a crossover, because they really like both. So in real life, there’s so much more overlap than I ever could have imagined. I think social media is just oftentimes the Yelp of the world, where if anyone has complaints, they’re going to go to social media with those complaints. So that’s where that schism is put on display.

15. It often seems like people don’t really know what’s actually happening in the genre they’re rejecting. They just reject it on the principle. Does that feel true to you?

That’s something I definitely grew out of as I got older and more mature. But when your personality is based around an underground grassroots movement, if you see something coming in that gives you the sense of it being threatened and you don’t want to see it change, it’s extremely valid. There are instances where gatekeeping makes sense in my head, because people don’t want to see something capitalism’d to death. They don’t want to see a bunch of businesspeople come in and extract authentic art for all the money they can and suck out of it for. That’s real. That’s valid.

But I think there’s almost a witch-hunt atmosphere where people see something get popular and all of a sudden their preferences and artistic tastes don’t necessarily overlap as much. Then they’re like, “Oh, this is corporate nonsense now, and I hate it.” I think people are trying to protect stuff they hold dear, and they might be coming from a place of being totally valid, but then sometimes the wrong stuff gets caught in the crosshairs.

17. You’re returning to Red Rocks this week. That venue is such a rite of passage for artists, especially electronic artists. What are your strongest memories of that place?

The first time I played there, I definitely cried mid-set. There is absolutely a magic to it. My favorite memories are probably the big crowd responses and the excitement of getting the sold-out trophy and cutting the cake with the little character of me on it that they give you backstage.

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18. What is the best business decision you’ve ever made?

Years ago, I had a manager who is now sober and who has hit me up and sent his best wishes. I wish him the best. But at the time, he was struggling with addiction, so things were not going well professionally. I wasn’t really doing anything on any legitimate scale yet, so I was super naive and had no idea how anything was supposed to work or be going.

I had this agent, Eric Silver, that came to me like, “Hey, your manager is hitting you up at 5 in the morning asking you to PayPal him. I’m pretty sure he’s doing drugs. I’m starting a management thing. Do you want me to be your manager?” I’m a conflict avoider, and I’m a huge pushover, so it was really tough, but I had to let go of my previous manager and go with Eric Silver, and then later Elise Young, and then later Brandon Garber. They’re the greatest team ever. They’re extreme geniuses. I always say Subtronics is a company I started, but I just turn the knobs and play the sets.

19. Who’s been your greatest mentor and what’s the best advice they’ve given you?

Longest term would be my dad. I always get paranoid when I tell people my dad is in the music industry, that they’ll think there’s nepotism there. I always try and reiterate that he’s a small, independent promoter. But all of the best advice I’ve gotten has been from him. Just him reminding me of stuff like success in the music industry is about relationships and being a nice, friendly person who people want to work with. These are things I’ve lived my life by and I believe are a huge reason why we’ve been able to be as successful as we have been.

20. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to your younger self?

Be patient, keep working hard, start eating better now. A big reason why you’re so anxious all the time is because you’re putting garbage food into your body. Your brain makes serotonin based off the nutrients you feed into it, so you’ll feel better emotionally if you start getting more physically active and if you start eating better food, because you’re miserable. So just hang in there and keep working hard, because it will get better.

Electronic realm favorite Blond:ish got a major global profile boost yesterday (May 21) with the release of her official edit of Taylor Swift’s “Fortnight.”
Her driving house take turns the BPM up significantly on the The Tortured Poets Department opener, turning the solemn Post Malone duet (which debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100) into pure dancefloor fuel that gets progressively richer, brighter, more blissed out and more club-focused as it goes on. (Regarding this sunshine mood, the producer herself wrote “Taylor Swift, but make it summer,” when sharing the track.)

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This isn’t the first time an artist from the electronic world has put their touch on a Swift song. Here are five other times that electronic producers have remixed her work.

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“Anti-Hero (Illenium Remix)”

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Dropping a month after the release of Midnights‘ lead single “Anti-Hero”, Illenium’s edit pushed Swift’s work further into the bass realm than ever before. The remix from the Colorado-based producer married the song’s shimmering melody with his signature future bass style, with his fingerprints especially evident in the soaring final third of the remix.

“Our teams had randomly talked about ‘Anti-Hero,’ the producer told Billboard of the remix in March. “They sent me stems… I finished it in like 36 hours and I sent it to them on like, a Monday night. They responded on Tuesday night like, hey this is coming out tomorrow.’ I was like, ‘okay! you do whatever you want’ …. I love Taylor Swift. Back in high school, one of her songs was in my top 25 on iTunes most played.”

Alongside this Illenium remix, Swift also dropped “Anti-Hero” edits by Canadian-born, London-baed house producer Jayda G, French artist Kungs and German singer/songwriter/producer Roosevelt.

“Cruel Summer (LP Giobbi Remix)”

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Coming towards the end of the 2023 U.S. Eras Tour (and four years after the release of the original), this official edit by Oregon-born, Austin-based producer LP Giobbi dials up the BPM of the synth pop original and transforms it into a slow-build, blissed out house jam custom-build for a peaktime dancefloor singalong. (Also consider Giobbi’s extended remix, which extends the original by a full minute.)

“I didn’t know when it was coming out actually,” Giobbi told the iHeartRadioCA podcast last October, “and when I woke up I had hundreds and hundreds of text messages and I was like, ‘What happened?’ and then I saw that Taylor Swift posted about me and tagged me, and I realized what had happened. It was a wild moment…I knew she was wildly powerful, but it was wild to see up close just how powerful she is.”

“Lavender Haze (Snakehips Remix)”

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British duo Snakehips built their early fanbase with bootleg remixes of artists including Banks and The Weeknd, getting a hot invite into the official remix fold when Swift had them deliver their take on Midnights‘ “Lavander Haze.” Their buoyant, house-oriented take on the song is as light as sunshine burning off haze itself, with the cool outro that makes up the 20 seconds of the edit adding a dose of club thump.

Taylor Swift – …Ready for It? (BloodPop® Remix)

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The pre-chorus of 2017’s Reputation opener “..Ready For It” gets beefed up courtesy of producer BloodPop®, who strips the song of its original booming bass and replaces it with layers (and layers) of cotton candy synth.

“Love Story” (Four Tet Remix)

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While not an official edit, Four Tet put himself into the Swift remix ouevre when he debuted his take on her 2008 classic “Love Story” during his set at Madison Square Garden with Skriillex and Fred again.. in February of 2023. The minimal take puts Swift’s “Romeo, save me” on a loop, turning the vocal into a hypnotic build that eventually gives way to Swift singing about “the lights, the parties, the ball gowns” over a spare, galloping beat.

In a 2023 interview with The Guardian, the producer born Kieran Hebden said he made the edit for (and with instruction by) his young daughter. “She ran up and her and Fred were dancing together,” Hebden said of the MSG show. “She knew I’d made it for her.” The bootleg also roused a crowd singalong when the trio dropped it during their 2023 Coachella headlining set. Hear it at the 38:12 minute mark in the officially released video of the set above.

In the Y2K era, even if you lived far from electronic music hubs like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, it was possible to tap into the scene through an American Express ad.
In 2000, the credit card company featured Moby‘s track “Find My Baby” in a commercial starring Tiger Woods. Another commercial for Bailey’s Irish Cream used Moby’s “Porcelain,” which was also licensed by Nordstrom, Volkswagen, Bosch and France Telecom. Maxwell House synced “Run On,” chocolate company Thornton’s attracted buyers with “Everloving.” The trend went on until every song from Moby’s 1999 studio album, Play — released 25 years ago this month — was synced at least once.

In this last era of the media monoculture, this strategy made the songs from Play ubiquitous. It also helped introduced many listeners (one suburban adolescent included) to electronic music, even if they didn’t really realize that’s what was happening.

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While album sales were initially anemic — Moby famously thought it’d be the last album he make before becoming a community college teacher — the synchs injected the album into mainstream consciousness and helped make it a major hit. The 18-track LP ultimately sold 2.7 million copies in the U.S., according to Luminate. It spent 94 weeks on the Billboard 200, becoming a mainstream breakthrough moment for a genre then referred to as “electronica.” In 2000, a version of Play’s “South Side” reworked to feature Gwen Stefani reached No. 14 on the Hot 100, spending 32 weeks on the chart.

“I don’t want to throw [my managers from that time] under the bus in any capacity,” Moby, 58, tells Billboard on a recent Monday afternoon in Los Angeles, “but they’ll talk about a strategy, and I guarantee you, there was no strategy. Or rather, the strategy was, ‘People were interested in the music, so we let them use it.’”

The success of Play of course changed the producer’s life, making him a pop culture fixture and setting up a career that now encompasses 23 studio albums, with a 24th, Always Centered At Night, coming June 14 via Mute. The project will feature different collaborators, including Serptenwithfeet and the late British writer Benjamin Zephaniah, on each of its 13 tracks.

This September, Moby will play seven European shows commemorating the quarter century of Play. Asked if he might bring this tour to the U.S., he essentially says no: “I hate touring. My manager realized the one way to get me on tour was to say, ‘How about you tour and give all the money to animal rights organizations? He knew that was the trick that would get me to do it. When the tour ends, I will literally have less money than when the tour started.’”

Next week in Los Angeles, however, he will take part in two very low-key anniversary celebrations, live recordings of his Moby Pod podcast happening at the 200-person capacity at the Masonic Lodge at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. These May 30-31 events will also include live acoustic versions of songs from Play.

Here, Moby talks about how the the success of the album changed his life, the “egregious selfishness” of modern pop culture and the movie he’d write about Trump.

1. Where are you in the world right now, and what is the setting like?

Well, as a clichéd, sober, middle-aged musician, I’m in Los Angeles driving my electric car on Melrose past Paramount Pictures, wondering if Paramount is still going to be in business in three weeks. I read some article over the weekend that they’re hemorrhaging money and they’re trying to sell it off and that all these different investment people are trying to buy it. So I’m driving by the beautiful Paramount lot right now. And who knows, maybe it’ll be a Walmart or a Costco at some point.

2. What is the first album or piece of music you bought for yourself, and what was the medium?

I remember it so clearly. My friend Ronald Little found five dollars. I was living in Stratford, Connecticut and was 10 years old. It was the late ’70s. I had never held five dollars. Like, it was so much money, and he found it, so it seemed like the greatest day ever.

We went to this discount store called Bradley’s, and Bradley’s was the cheapest of cheap discount stores. I grew up really poor, so we did a lot of our shopping at Bradley’s. And Ron Little, in his generosity, gave me a dollar because I had been with him when he found the five dollars. I used it to buy a seven-inch single of the song “Convoy” by C.W. McCall. I took it home, and I’m not kidding — I listened to it 40 times in a row, to the point where my mother was concerned. After the first 10 times she was like, “This is kind of cute.” After 20 she was like, “You’re still listening to the song.” I wondered if at that point she might have figured out I was going to be both a musician and a drug addict.

3. What is it typical day for you? Is there such a thing?

Every day is exactly the same. As a sober, old guy, my days — I love them, but they’re so boring. I wake up around 4:30 in the morning. I have a smoothie, and I read 20 different online newspapers. The Washington Post, the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, etc. My big indulgence — it’s so boring, I’m ashamed of how tedious I am — I make a big pot of organic white tea and read fiction for an hour.

Then I do a bunch of work stuff in the morning. My friend Lindsey and I have a little film and TV production company. So I do a lot of meetings and emails, then exercise, lunch, more work. Usually I go on a hike. After dinner, from 6:00 p.m. until 10:00, that’s when I work on music, because the world gets quiet, and I can just sit in my studio like a little middle-aged monk.

4. What’s the last great fiction book you read?

I’m a little bit ashamed. I’m going to be honest, when I started touring, I was a literature snob. This is going back to the early ’90s. When I was on tour I would bring some work of challenging fiction. I was like, “I’m going to read it in the airport and on the tour bus.” But then I realized I was actually much happier reading the sort of plot-driven airport fiction that I bought in the airports. I would bring like, Aldous Huxley’s Eyeless In Gaza and end up reading Stephen King.

To this day I’m kind of ashamed to admit this, but I love what I call “airport fiction.” Like plot-driven fun. A lot of it’s incredibly well written. So I’m going to be honest, the book I’m finishing right now is from a series called Orphan X. It’s basically this guy who was trained to be the world’s greatest assassin, but he also has to remember how to be human. They’re sweet, funny, and well written. I could lie and say that I’m re-reading Eyeless In Gaza, but the truth is, I’m reading the new Orphan X.

5. I was reading about how the licensing songs from Play for commercials and other synchs really triggered its success. How involved were you in the strategy of getting the music out by licensing the songs?

Well, I am kind of pleased you think there was a strategy… When Play was released, it kind of failed. It didn’t sell very well. It didn’t get great reviews for the most part. The tour was tiny. The first show I played was in the basement of a Virgin Megastore in Union Square and around 20 people showed up, and it was free. The only interest we received was from people who wanted to license the music for advertisements, TV and movies. We kind of just said “yes” to almost everything, because it was the only sort of interest we were getting.

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6. Everything I’ve read about the synchs from Play emphasized how fabulously lucrative the whole endeavor was. How did that money change your life?

I grew up in the world of hardcore punk rock in and around New York in the early ’80s, and one of my favorite bands, like everybody’s, was Minor Threat. One of my musical and spiritual heroes was Ian MacKaye from Minor Threat who famously would only charge $5 for a show. As you know, the straight edge punk rock scene of the early ’80s was aggressively non-capitalistic. So when I started licensing music and making money from it — and it’s tricky because it might sound self-serving or even self-aggrandizing — the deal I made with myself was, “Make money so you can do something good with the money.” It seemed creepy to draw too much attention to that, so I’m very I’m very hesitant to mention it. But my idea was, “if I have money, I can try and use it to a good effect.”

To be fair, I did some very selfish, stupid things where I spent money on myself — and realized that even if you buy a giant house, no matter where I lived, I was still an insecure, anxious little weirdo. So I was quickly disabused of the idea that buying a giant house was going to fix any of my problems… Rather, I said, okay, I’ve made some money. Let me figure out how to live a comfortable, simple, life then ideally use the money to sort of move the needle away from this current, terrible status quo, this current terrible system regarding food production, environmental destruction, attacks on democracy, voter suppression. In my way, I’ve been trying to stay true to that.

7. It seems like it’s worked. Those things are kind of pillars of your career and who people know you to be on a public perception level, right?

I do feel weird talking about it. Of course I have an ego, but I don’t like publicizing it necessarily, unless there is a utility — because obviously we live in a time where a lot of pop culture and entertainment is egregiously selfish and egregiously gratuitous. My hope is that maybe I can, and I know it sounds immodest, remind people that gratuitous self-interested culture and life is not really what’s called for as the world is collapsing.

8. You’ve been working for the animal rights cause for as long as I can remember. Are there things happening now that are encouraging to you?

I became vegan in 1987, and in 1987, I believe there were two vegan restaurants in the world. No one even knew how to say the word “vegan.” Now I’m in Los Angeles, and there 50 vegan restaurants in a 10 mile radius of where I live. The progress has been remarkable. There’s so many politicians who are vegan and celebrities who are vegan. Almost everyone’s aware of what “vegan” is. In fact, one of the big problems now is on a legislative level and PR level is fighting the vegan backlash. The Florida State Legislature with [Governor Ron] DeSantis recently passed legislation banning alternative protein production in Florida.

So [the awareness] is very widespread, but at the same time, meat consumption keeps going up. The fact that human beings are responsible for the deaths of [billions] of individual animals every year, means that I can’t for a second feel good about where we are, because it’s so far from where we need to be.

9. If you could share one piece of information with someone who’s not educated on the cause, in the hopes of influencing them, what would you say?

What makes being a vegan activist so interesting strategically is that everybody responds to different types of information. I was talking to one person who, maybe they were a sociopath, but they didn’t like animals. My argument to them was like, “What about the climate? What about human health? What about workers rights? What about antibiotic resistance? What about rainforest deforestation? Do you care about any of those things?” They were like, “Yeah, I care about all those things.” I was like, “Well, then this is why we should stop using animals for food.”

It’s hard to pick the one thing that everyone responds to. One thing I keep coming up against that’s so baffling is how the majority of the people on the planet either like animals or at the very least are horrified by the idea of animal suffering. But yet the majority of people on the planet routinely contribute to and cause animal suffering. It’s so confusing that if you try to show someone a picture or video of how their food is produced, they’ll recoil in horror, because the logical extension of that is to say to them, “then stop eating what you’re eating.”

10. What do you think that is, that disconnect?

One could argue that it’s the disconnect that’s behind a lot of baffling human behavior. What I mean by that is, people who want to be healthy, but they eat food that kills them. Or people who think of themselves as good people, but they steal, cheat, lie and do terrible things.

You could argue that there’s a neurological component or even like a neurotransmitter component, that we have these different brains cobbled together in one brain. There’s our prefrontal cortex, this sort of seat of executive function that makes rational decisions. But then our pleasure centers, the older parts of the brain, are so powerful that you can hold on to these ostensibly paradoxical ideas, because they both make people feel good. Someone can say “I love animals,” but they can also say “I love foie gras.” We can be like, well, rationally, it’s not possible to do both. But both things make them happy, and so the well-being they feel is what determines the epistemological narrative around it.

11. This is a clunky segue, but in terms of pleasure centers, I’m thinking about you in the Play era when things got so big. What was the crest of that wave like for you, and how well did you ride that wave of fame?

Some people are great at being famous. I was not one of those people, because I had never expected it. To my shame — again, as someone who grew up listening to Minor Threat — I embraced fame way too hard. I was drinking and doing drugs and going to fancy events. I really went whole-hog into the world of idiotic fame. But I’m really grateful for it, because it was the greatest education I’ve ever had.

We live in a culture that prioritizes and glamorizes fame and famous people. I, for a brief period, was very famous and had a lot of famous friends. I realized, “Oh, this kind of is shallow and idiotic.” And so it’s made it very easy to not be tempted by the trappings of fame, because I indulged in it so hard, and I realized how shallow it is. I don’t mean that in a academic dismissive way. I mean, I experienced it firsthand, and it’s stupid.

12. Can you give me an example of it being stupid?

I mean, there was a period where I went to every award show, even if I didn’t have any business being there. Even though I met some very nice movie stars and musicians, the conversations were never, ever as interesting or funny as the conversations I have with the people I went to high school with. A dinner party with your best friends from college will by definition be a thousand times funnier, smarter and more interesting than any dinner with any celebrity ever.

13. Before you mentioned the gratuitous selfishness of culture of large and celebrity culture in particular? Having lived that life, do you have a level of compassion for people you see who are currently in it?

You’ve touched on something that I really have to edit myself on, because it’s that really underlying question of: as a species, why do we do what we do? Why do we make the choices we make? Why do we value what we value?

In the broadest sense, to me, everything has an existential underpinning. We are scared, weird little monkeys who have no understanding of who we are or our place in the universe. And so we desperately grab for anything that either provides answers or makes us feel good for the next five minutes. It’s kind of sad how we’re wired. I don’t think I’m exempted from that, but I think I’ve indulged it enough where I can take a step back and understand the sort of flawed utility of a lot of those conventional choices.

14. You described your sort of quote unquote boring day before. Has that structure eased the existential dilemma of daily life for you?

Oh yeah. For me it really has. But part of this is also that I live across the street from Griffith Park in Los Angeles, and Griffith Park is wild in the literal sense. I go hiking every day in parts of Griffith Park where there are no humans, and I see the coyotes, the rattlesnakes, and all this nature in these plants. To me that — sorry, if I sound like a complete Paul Stamets or John Muir hippie — but that’s what heals my existential dilemma, being reminded that the concerns of humanity are kind of sad and shallow, whereas nature actually embodies a wisdom that humanity has yet to figure out.

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15. Okay, then this is probably going sound like a really shallow question, but what do you consider your greatest career achievement? Or do you think you’ve done it yet?

My greatest career achievement is a really simple one, and broad — which is that I seem to have, at times, made music that has given people emotional comfort. That’s it. That’s the only thing. Nothing else matters. There are no metrics, or sales figures, or revenue streams. All of that is nonsense. The only thing that matters is every now and then, someone will tell me that a piece of music I’ve made has provided them emotional comfort or outlet.

16. Well then maybe having done that, there’s no answer for this next question, but I’m wondering if you have any professional regrets?

Well, it’s a wonderful question. Here’s the thing: I have tons of regrets, but at the same time, one of the things I’m most grateful for is the perspective that I have. And perspective, at this moment for every single person on the planet, is the result of our experiences. So if you’re grateful for your perspective, it’s really hard to criticize any of the experiences that have informed or contributed to that perspective.

17. If you were going to take one song from Play and turn it into a “Convoy”-style spinoff movie starring the modern-day Kris Kristofferson, what song would it be?

Oh, boy. Wow. It’s a cover song, the song “Run On.” It’s an interesting one, because when I did my version of it, I knew it was an old standard. But by releasing it, so many people told me just how much of an old standard it was. Like, Elvis did a version of it. The Carter family did a version of it. It’s an ancient song. The narrative of it, for some reason, every time I listen to it or play it now, I think of Donald Trump.

18. Why?

Because it’s basically about some evil, terrible, horrifying person reaping the fruits of their evil. Sorry if you or anyone you know is Trump supporter, but I’m stunned that this horrifying — I mean, he’s almost like some evil, lizard, space alien person pretending to be human because it’s like he’s cartoonishly evil, but yet 50% of Americans want to vote for him. So, the story of this soulless psychopathic, antisocial personality disorder, a person who has basically gilded themselves and done everything to amass wealth and power. It’s like, when do the consequences show up?

I don’t want him to suffer, but I think the song “Run On” does kind of describe a narrative that in my lesser moments, I think, would hopefully apply to Trump. If you’re bored, listen to the song and think of someone like Trump — who, as we know, is currently on trial for cheating on his pregnant wife with a porn star. And yet the Evangelicals love and support him. The cognitive dissonance I think we all have around this is literally mind-boggling.

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19. What’s one piece of advice you’d get you’d give to your younger self?

What we were talking about earlier: If you’re grateful for the perspective you have, you couldn’t go back in time and change anything. So even if I went back in time and met myself at my most idiotic, my most entitled, narcissistic and selfish, I might just say to myself, like, “Yep, just keep on doing what you’re doing, because even though it’s idiotic, it hopefully will lead to something. There might be some wisdom that is the product of this idiocy that will prove itself over time.”

20. That sounds like someone who likes themself in this current moment can say, yes?

Like I said, I’m so grateful for the weird perspective that I have. We all have adversity, but ultimately adversity is a part of learning, and I don’t want to suffer. I don’t want anyone to suffer. But boy, I’ve certainly learned more from mistakes of my own making than I have from any success I’ve been involved in.

This week in dance music: San Francisco’s Portola festival announced a massive 2024 lineup, we looked at why artists are moving their TikTok remixes off of Spotify, Marshmello and Kane Brown made chart history with their track “Miles On It” becoming the first track to hot the top five of both Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and Hot Country Songs, Chicago announced citywide celebrations for the 40th anniversary of house music, Paramount+ announced that a documentary about the Nova Music Festival massacre will be coming to the platform and French electronic pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre performed with Queen’s Brian May in Slovakia.

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See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

And of course, here are the best new dance tracks of the week.

Trending on Billboard

Peggy Gou, “Lobster Telephone”

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Weeks ahead of the release of her debut album, I Hear You, Peggy Gou has delivered the project’s fourth single, “Lobster Telephone.” Gou’s favorite song from the 10-track album (according to a press release) the dreamy house production also function as the project’s spiritual and aesthetic center, fitting squarely in the wheelhouse of the album’s heavy ’90s dance music influence. In her recent Billboard cover story, Gou said that I Hear You (out June 7 via XL Recordings) will be a success to her if people listen to it and “get a feeling.” Emanating warmth, this one feels a lot like the summer season ahead.

Bebe Rexha, “Chase It (Mmm Da Da Da) “

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Bebe Rexha debuted her latest track “Chase” last month at Coachella, and today delivers the song in its most fully realized format, via a slick (and quite sexy) racing-themed video filmed between the L.A. river and a mechanic’s garage. The clip features Rexha and a crew of dancers demonstrating the pop-lock-and-wiggle potential of the song, which was produced by Chris Lake and Sammy Virji (who released their own collaboration “Summertime Blues” late last month), along with Punctual and Marco Straus. This dance-focused project is no surprise, given that Rexha has one biggest dance hits of the last few years with her David Guetta collab “I’m Good (Blue),” which spent 55 weeks at No. 1 on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs.

Shygirl feat. Danny L. Harle, “Encore”

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“Buy a drink, take a shot/ Spill a bit/ Lick it up,” purrs Shygirl on her latest, “Encore.” The track whips up a spirit of hedonism with both these and other mature-themes lyrics in tandem with a thick, skittering electro production that’s well-matched with a music video capturing the type of late night behavior the song is designed to soundtrack and elicit. A collaboration with British producer Danny L. Harle, “Encore” comes from Shygirl’s forthcoming Club Shy Rmx EP, a collection of remixes of her 2024 Club Shy project by artists including VTSS, Logic1000, X-Coast and Fedde Le Grand. (Both projects are out via Because Music.) The London-based artist is on tour in the U.S. and Europe this summer and will go on the road with Charli XCX and Troye Sivan for their ravey 21-date Sweat tour starting in September.

John Summit & Sub Focus feat. Julia Church, “Go Back”

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On his latest, “Go Back,” John Summit takes the progressive house style that’s coming to define his growing catalog and injects it with a dose of d’n’b via the help of U.K. genre star Sub Focus. Together, the guys — along with South Africa-born, London-based vocalist Julia Church — create a track with the same sort of ecstasy-laced emotiveness of other Summit hits like “Where You Are,” with this one getting a slightly harder, higher BPM treatment via a final third that’s fully dancefloor d’n’b. Out via Summit’s own Experts Only label, the song will surely be heard during his set EDC Las Vegas this weekend, with this stop coming amid a heavy summer tour schedule and a sold out show at Madison Square Garden on June 29.

Fatboy Slim feat. Dan Diamond & Luca Guerrieri, “Role Model”

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The 500th release on Fatboy Slim’s Southern Fried Records is, appropriately, a Fatboy Slim track. Spicy and psychedelic in the style of any given Fatboy Slim set, “Role Model” is all scintillating percussion, cowbell, sirens and a tongue in cheek vocal from Dan Diamond about behaviors that could be considered role model material, depending on the type of person you are. Altogether, it’s high-quality dancefloor fare with an absurdist attitude, classic Fatboy Slim output. Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Southern Fried Records was launched to release music by Fatboy Slim’s alias Mighty Dub Katz and over the years has released an eclectic mix of music by artists like Armand van Helden and Crookers.