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This week in dance music: We explored the world of sports and DJing, tagging along with Kaskade at the Super Bowl, talking to Shaquille O’Neil about his electronic output, as well as to Philadelphia Phillies DJ Garrett Stubbs and to 16 NBA DJs. Also, Justice was announced as a 2024 SXSW speaker and we spoke to the creative director of Boiler Room.
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Here also, of course, are the best new dance tracks of the week.
Trending on Billboard
Subtronics, TESSERACT
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The bass scene continues its headbanging, rail-riding forward momentum with the release of TESSERACT, the sophomore album from Philadelphia’s Subtronics. The 16-track LP, out via the artists’ own Cyclops Recordings, is loaded with genre regulars — Excision, Grabbitz, HOL! (of “COUNTRY RIDDIM” fame) and REZZ among them — with this latter artist joining the producer born Jesse Kardon for the dark, squelchy, spatial “Black Ice.” Altogether the album has more subdued and sometimes groovy moments, some grime influence other tracks that hit like a two-by-four to the face, demonstrating Kardon’s heavy, heady, frequently psychedelic range.
“Some songs are meant for the dancefloor, some are meant for the car, and some are meant to serenade you to sleep,” he says. “I am trying as best I can to create a fascinating alternative reality with magic and a sci-fi world of energy and feeling.” Subtronics — the only electronic artist to hit Pollstar’s 2023 Top 100 North American Tours chart, at No. 75 — launches his 16-date North American tour tonight in Minneapolis, with two shows at Red Rocks also on the calendar for May.
John Summit & Hayla, “Shiver”
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The winning formula this pair forged on their hit “Where You Are” — which showed up on President Obama’s favorite songs of 2023 list — extends to “Shiver,” which features Hayla’s increasingly iconic voice over a cinematic, climax-laden progressive house production from Summit. “Last year, Hayla and I had one of the biggest dance records of the year with ‘Where You Are,”’ he says, “so we knew we had to follow it up, and it was much easier said than done. It took about nine months start to finish to get this record done, but damn it was worth it. This might be my favorite record to date — definitely the most emotion I put behind a song.”
The track is out on Summit’s Experts Only label and comes ahead of his performances at Coachella 2024, where he’ll play solo and with Dom Dolla as Under Construction, along with his sold out Madison Square Garden show in July. Both Summit and Hayla have debut albums coming later this year.
Calvin Harris & Rag’n’Bone Man, “Lovers In A Past Life”
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Calvin Harris and U.K. singer-songwriter Rag n Bone Man, who scored a hit together with 2019’s “Giant” — re-link for “Lovers In a Past Life.” Recorded at the end of 2023, the song finds Harris meshing a slinky guitar, kickdrum and waves of synth with the husky voice of Rag n Bone Man, who keeps the Valentine’s Day mood alive with lyrics about “slow dancing in the midnight glow.” The track follows announcements that Harris will be a 2024 resident at LIV Las Vegas and LIV Beach inside the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, and will return to Ushauïa in Ibiza for a Friday night residency this season.
Nia Archives, “Silence Is Loud”
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U.K. junglist Nia Archives extends a hot streak with “Silence Is Loud,” the title track from her debut album coming this April 12. Weaving classic jungle with rave, indie and Brit-pop, the song is a propulsive and high-impact two-and-a-half minute ode to the producer’s love for her brother, without whom, the lyrics go, “the silence is loud.” The album, out via HIJINXX/Island Records and made with David Byrne and FKA Twigs collaborator Ethan P. Flynn, is meant to function as a complete work rather than a collection of tracks — with Archives pushing the genre forward by, she says, “putting interesting sounds on jungle.”
Francis Mercier & Emmanuel Jal “Hustla”
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February isn’t famous for its weather, but Haitian DJ Francis Mercier transports us to the warm beaches of our mind with his latest, “Hustla.” Out on Higher Ground, the Afro-house track has an impeccably laidback vibe, with Mercier creating a steamy, breezy groove and South Sudanese-Canadian singer Emmanuel Jal adding vocals that match the production as speaks of “the heat of Port-au-Prince, to the streets of New York, rocking in the souk of Marrakesh, headed to the hills of Nairobi, on the way to the beaches of Rio.” Even if your weekend plans don’t involve much more than hanging around the house, let this one take you away.
Four Tet, “Daydream Repeat”
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It’s a big week for Four Tet, who announced his very own festival — the aptly titled Four Tet & Friends — happening this May 4-5 in Brooklyn. The event will feature producers including Ben UFO, Chloé Robinson, Daphni b2b Floating Points, Salute, Avalon Emerson and multiple sets from Four Tet himself. This news comes in tandem with the producer’s latest, “Daydream Repeat,” which takes the chime sound so essential to the Four Tet oeuvre and places it amongst a propulsive, but also delicate (and even occasionally slightly gritty) six-minute production. The song is the latest single from Four Tet’s twelfth studio album Three, coming March 15.
02/16/2024
DJs for 16 NBA teams talk about the pressures and glories of selecting the soundtracks for each season.
02/16/2024
Cat Janice’s “Dance You Outta My Head” tops another Billboard chart, jumping 5-1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 dated Feb. 17.
The TikTok Billboard Top 50 is a weekly ranking of the most popular songs on TikTok in the United States based on creations, video views and user engagement. The latest chart reflects activity Feb. 5-11. Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard charts except for the TikTok Billboard Top 50. As previously noted, titles that are part of Universal Music Group’s catalog are currently unavailable on TikTok.
“Dance You Outta My Head” continues to rise on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 as more users learn about and spread both the song and Janice’s story. The 31-year-old singer is currently in hospice care after being diagnosed with cancer, and the newly released track (Jan. 19) is dedicated to her 7-year-old son as her final song.
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Janice herself has continued to post about the song’s success intermittently on TikTok, while other users post dance or lip-synch videos, raise awareness of Janice’s condition or simply use the tune to soundtrack viral moments.
Trending on Billboard
“Dance You Outta My Head” concurrently reaches the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart for the first time, lifting 11-10. It earned 5,000 downloads Feb. 2-8, good enough for its first week at No. 1 on the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales list, and 1.2 million official U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
Below Janice, Cordelia’s “Little Life” lifts to a new peak of No. 2 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50. The tune has been in the top 10 of the chart for the last five weeks, reaching new heights thanks to a trend in which users say they’re eating half of a food item, but do so in increasingly convoluted ways.
Rich Amiri’s “One Call,” the previous chart’s No. 2, and Flo Milli’s “Never Lose Me,” the prior list’s ruler, fall to Nos. 3 and 4, respectively. They’re ahead of the debuting Coldplay classic “Yellow,” which enters the ranking at No. 5. Recent top-performing videos for the song, a No. 48 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for the band in 2001, include footage from Coldplay’s Asian tour as well as a viral upload of a pair of fans getting married to the track.
Concurrent with its debut on Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart (No. 38), YG Marley’s “Praise Jah in the Moonlight” reaches the TikTok Billboard Top 50’s top 10 for the first time, vaulting 20-9. The grandson of Bob Marley first found success with the track on TikTok after performing it during mother Lauryn Hill’s concerts late last year, which preceded its eventual release that December.
Recent activity using “Praise Jah in the Moonlight” often covers dance trends as well as users pointing out Marley’s heritage, fitting timing given the release of the new Bob Marley biopic Bob Marley: One Love, which premiered in the U.S. Feb. 14.
“Praise Jah in the Moonlight” jumps 74-60 on the Hot 100 via a 33% boost in streams to 8.3 million total.
See the full TikTok Billboard Top 50 here. You can also tune in each Friday to SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio (channel 4) to hear the premiere of the chart’s top 10 countdown at 3 p.m. ET, with reruns heard throughout the week.
Karol G had three things to celebrate on Wednesday (Feb. 14): her 33rd birthday, Valentine’s Day and a new single. The Colombian superstar unveiled her new track, “Contigo,” her latest collaboration with Tiësto. This also marks the pair’s third effort together, following “Don’t Be Shy” (2021) and “Provenza (Remix),” part of Karol’s 2023 Mañana Será […]
The Justice comeback is gaining momentum, with the French duo confirmed as keynote speakers at SXSW 2024. Happening at the Austin Convention Center on March 13 at 2:30 p.m., this rare public conversation from Justice’s Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay will focus on their forthcoming album, Hyperdrama (due out April 26), and the legacy and future of the renowned […]
Even for casual dance fans, the format is immediately recognizable. A tight shot of a DJ behind the decks, with a heaving, usually very enthusiastic, typically quite stylish crowd packed behind them, going for it.
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Launched in 2010, as it so often touts “with a webcam taped to a wall,” Boiler Room has become one of the most influential brands in dance music, using a globally understood visual language to telegraph dance music from around the world to a sprawling online fanbase of roughly seven million subscribers across YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok. Based in London, Boiler Rooms claims its content reaches 283 million viewers every month.
They’re tuning in to watch DJ sets from Uzbekistan, Mumbai, Johannesburg, Osaka and other locales far from the standard-issue club circuit. This year, the platform will release a documentary on a pair of simultaneous shows it did in Damascus, Syria and in Berlin, home to a large population of the Syrian diaspora.
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“These kind of breaking ground events, like in Soweto, or Syria, or Uzbekistan, really come from the belief that there is club culture everywhere,” Boiler Room’s creative director Amar Ediriwira tells Billboard over Zoom from London. “In some cases it might exist as a form of political resistance, like in Palestine or in Syria. In other cases, it’s just a lens on youth culture, but it’s really our remit to go there and switch on the camera.”
The brand has also become an IRL juggernaut. Its 2023 World Tour hosted nearly half a million attendees in dozens of cities, drawing an average of 5,500 people to not just well-trod club culture capitals like New York City, Paris and Amsterdam, but to Seoul, Mexico City, Mumbai and Bristol. 20,000 showed up for Boiler Room’s festival at London’s Burgess Park last September, marking the platforms biggest ever show. Launching this spring, Boiler Room’s 2024 World Tour will hit 24 cities including Delhi, Bogota, Edinburgh, Rio de Janeiro and Las Vegas.
“We’re able to sell out these shows largely based on trust,” says Ediriwira. “People trust our curation, and they trust the experience and the special-ness you get our shows, which I think means we can platform more emerging artists, be more conceptual and present interesting programs.”
Boiler Room’s signature livestreams, invite-only events where the crowd is made up of people closest to the artist, have maintained the sort of underground authenticity that’s heavily valued in certain sectors of the dance scene, even while drawing its share of stars, with M.I.A. performing for 50 people in the Boiler Room office in 2022 and a 2023 reunion show from U.K. pop outfit Sugababes. A livestream from U.K. greats Chase & Status was the platform’s most viewed stream of 2023. But despite this star power, Ediriwira says the company is “fully focused on grassroots sounds, documenting local stories, spotlighting emerging artists.”
Boiler Room New York City 2023
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To find these scenes, Boiler Room employees a 50-person London-based staff and “a giant network” of researchers, artists, curators, producers, designers, technicians, stage managers and promotion partners who offer expertise and the support often especially needed more off the beaten path locales. A 2022 livestream in Karachi, Pakistan required the team to locate CDJs and speakers when organizers ran into, Ediriwira recalls, “a complete lack of equipment.” Livestreams have also happened from a fish-and-chips shop, from beaches and from the top of a mountain.
Boiler Room’s ambitious efforts have had a huge impact in showing grassroots club culture — via programming that’s vastly more diverse and equitable than most U.S. club and festival lineups — to the world. So too has it turned local artists into global names. Palestinian producer Sama’ Abdhuladi became a star after her 2018 Boiler Room set, as did Pakistani producer Lyla. Fred again..’s viral 2022 Boiler Room set put a rocket launcher on an already rising name, with his stream generating 30 million YouTube views to date.
Boiler Room was acquired by ticketing platform Dice in 2021, and Ediriwira says the integration with DICE’s platform “has been transformative to us as a business” in how it allows for seamless ticket sales and a better connection with fans. The Dice deal also centralized operations like finance and human resources, leading to “a much happier and more aligned team.” While Boiler Room makes almost nothing from its YouTube content, as it doesn’t own any rights to the music (Ediriwira says the channel generates “significant revenues” for rights holders,) its revenue comes from brand partnerships — including long-term deals with Pernod Ricard and Ballantine’s — along with ticketed events and its apparel brand.
The rise of TikTok has also fueled the expansion of Boiler Room and its star-making power, with its easily recognizable, audio-lead format uniquely suited to create viral moments. Such moments help turn hyper-local artists into globally known names, with subsequent bookings on Boiler Room World Tour show offering a pipeline of exposure for some of these acts.
The brand has become so ubiquitous in the dance vernacular over the last 14 years that when Skrillex, Fred again.. and Four Tet announced they’d be closing out Coachella 2023 with a show in the round, many declared they’d be doing it “Boiler Room-style.”
“Boiler Room invented this type of communication that didn’t exist before, and so anyone from Fred again.. and Skrillex and Four Tet to these smaller localized streams could replicate that format,” says Ediriwira. “I don’t think we really see it as competition.”
Here, he discusses the past, present and future of the project.
Boiler Room puts on so many livestreams. With the number of events you’re doing, how do you assure each experience feels special?
The biggest conversation we have is about being cautious and protecting Boiler Room. I think we’ve gotten to this point by being super consistent and investing in this format. One of the most important goals for us is growing slowly and staying grounded in our values. We could probably double the capacity of some of our festivals next year, but we want to nurture what we’re doing.
One of the ways [we do that] is by limiting the number of broadcasts and productions each year [to] 100, which still sounds like a lot. But in the past, we’ve been doing 150 and even more. Scaling back in this way sounds counterintuitive, but it allows us to focus on the curation and experience of all these shows.
What was lost when you were doing 150-plus shows?
When you don’t have necessarily a limit, it means there isn’t competition for ideas. If there’s a potentially a never-ending supply of productions and broadcasts, you can just keep adding things in. As soon as you put a limit of 100, it just forces this idea of quality. Like, we’re only going to do one broadcast in Seoul this year, so what’s the one idea the world should see.
You mentioned Boiler Room’s values — what’s the mandate there?
Our vision for programming has always been very consistent. Our thesis has always been around championing grassroots scenes and genres, emerging artists and hyperlocal [scenes.] That’s really in our DNA. It’s what the original streams in London were about — spotlighting and opening a vantage to a community, a scene and a sound coming out of London that happened to be incredibly fertile and had lot of artists involved that went on to have really big careers. Now, it’s that very localized emerging talent approach and the stories around those artists and the immediate community surrounding them.
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Boiler Room claims that 283 million people watch its content every month. Break that number down for me.
The format has been wildly famous. We’ve been working year after year, event after event with this one format in a very consistent way, building up an audience of fans.
I’d go as far as saying it’s become more than a brand; it’s become a global phenomenon and a dominant method of visual communication of club culture. Almost a form of documentary journalism, except that it’s very fun and entertaining and voyeuristic. And also, unlike journalism, it doesn’t have to impose a narrative, you’re simply putting a camera and decks in the room, and you can do whatever you want in that space.
There’s something remarkable in the way that spotlighting hyper-local scenes has become one of the most recognizable and influential things in the dance space. Why do you think there’s such a fascination with locations that one might not immediately associate with club culture?
I think the world has moved in that direction. I think it’s interesting, when you think of pop stars or famous people, a lot of them have some link back to an underground sensibility or something very localized. That’s increasingly happening. That’s something we’ve always been focused on, but the world has shifted in that direction.
We do also have bigger artists play the platform, obviously Fred again.. was a massive moment. We’ve had people like PinkPantheress, Sugababes, M.I.A. Largely when we work with them, we still keep to this concept of staging it in an underground setting, making it super intimate, invite-only… But at the same time, I think we’ve become known as one of the biggest early-stage springboards an artist can have. A lot of artists become overnight sensations with us, and a lot of artists kind of attribute that career-breaking moment to their Boiler Room moment. We saw that start happening with more frequency four or five years ago.
Tell me more about that.
What’s interesting is noticing how these breaking moments on our platform are starting to happen all over the world, and not just in Western or global northern cultural capitals like London or New York. The obvious example is when we did our first broadcast in Palestine [in 2018], and Sama’ [Abdulhadi] became an internet sensation overnight practically. That show’s on like, 10 million views.
Similarly, when we did Pakistan, Lyla’s went viral and hit half million plays in a matter of months. I think there’s just this fascination of, “What does club culture in Pakistan look like?” Especially when the dominant media narrative about place like Pakistan is very different.
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Obviously social media was much less of a factor when Boiler Room started in 2010. What affect have platforms like Instagram and TikTok had on Boiler Room?
In recent years, it’s completely exploded in short form. When we started out, short-form wasn’t even a consideration — but now with Instagram and Tiktok in particular, a key thing for us has been the rise of moments. You’re seeing a lot of artists break from their moments, not necessarily from their broadcasts. Tiktok has said to us that our format works really well because it’s recognizable in the feed, and it’s audio-led. Our content was popular there before we even started our own [TikTok] channel.
Then at the same time, it’s interesting, because people’s attention spans are shrinking — not to sound like an old person — but at the same time as short-form blowing up for us, we’re one of the few platforms I can think of in the music space, at least, that’s committed to long-form content. That’s our core format. That’s the archive.
Given Boiler Room’s cultural cachet, are a lot of brands vying to work with you? How judicious do you have to be about who you’re letting in?
It’s a good question. There’s a lot of brand interest in what we do. What’s interesting about that interest is people usually come to us because they know what we do, and because we’ve been investing in this one format in a very consistent way. So usually, they’re not coming to us looking to white label something or create some new concept, so much as to just invest in what we do.
It’s a really great position to be in, because I think it allows us to stay focused and consistent in what we want to do and stay true to the values we have. For us, it’s mainly about making sure we align with the brands that are interested in us, and if they’re about championing local sounds, championing emerging artists, all of those kinds of things, there’s no reason why we wouldn’t work with them, in theory.
Are there brands that come to you looking for a partnership where you’re just like, “Nah, not gonna work“?
No comment.
Is there anywhere in the world Boiler Room is particularly interested in going?
We just kicked off a series spotlighting music and cultures in the Pacific Islands with a show in Rarotonga, so we’re excited to make our return to this part of the world over the coming months and years. We’re also currently exploring launching a similar series in the Caribbean.
Is there anywhere you won’t go?
I don’t know if there’s an outright ban on anywhere off the top of my head. It all just comes down to what the story is and championing a local story or scene we feel is authentic and part the club culture we care about.
In his two seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies, catcher Garrett Stubbs has played in just 87 of a possible 324 games — par for the course when you’re backing up J.T. Realmuto, commonly referred to by Phillies fans as the “BCIB” (Best Catcher in Baseball). But despite his limited time on the field, Stubbs has become one of the most beloved and recognizable Phils for his role as the team’s preeminent Clubhouse Guy — as well as their anointed post-game DJ.
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With the Phils’ locker room turning into Philadelphia’s hottest club over their five playoff series victories across 2022-23, Stubbs has also become one of the city’s most influential aux-cord wielders with his celebratory selections, collected in his publicly available “Phils Win” Spotify playlist (nearly 30,000 likes). The most famous of the bunch, Tiësto’s remix of Calum Scott’s cover of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” caught so much local heat after it became the Phils’ unlikely postseason anthem in 2022, which propelled the song back onto the Billboard charts, making the Digital Song Sales top 10 last October.
Below, Stubbs talks with Billboard about how he became The Guy for soundtracking the team’s champagne-soaked celebrations, as well as why his club loves a good dance remix, and whether they’ll ever be able to get away from “Dancing on My Own.”
Trending on Billboard
How did you become the sort of official team DJ/Spotify playlist curator here?
Somebody’s gotta do it, and I’d say because my role on the team as far as playing time goes is limited, I just became the guy who came into the locker room after the games to turn on the music. As guys started to like certain songs, I just started to accumulate the ones that everyone liked and put them into a playlist. And then slowly but surely, there ended up being 1, 2, 20, 50, 100 songs on the playlist.
Over the past couple years, who else on the team have been your supporting curators?
Schwarbs [Kyle Schwarber] is a big one. He’s certainly a guy that brings good vibes to the locker room. [Nick] Castellanos is another one. He’s got very eclectic taste in music — he’s a huge J. Cole fan and likes to play anything from rap all the way to ODESZA. And he is a big fan of those two — if you walk into the locker room and either one of those two is playing, he definitely got ahold of the sticks.
Do you need a sort of quorum of team approval to put a song on the playlist? Are there any times that you try to sneak one on that you like — or do you need to have, like, a couple co-signs before you put one on the official team playlist?
No, I put random songs on there all the time. [Laughs.] So I generally will just like a song and put it on there, and then it’ll play in the locker room at certain times of the day, or after the game, and when the song comes on, I’ll just around the locker room and see what vibe I’m getting from everybody. And if it’s good, it stays, and if it’s not good, it gets taken off quickly.
Do you remember any times you got a particularly bad response to a song you were excited about?
Not so much a bad response — I mean, sometimes guys get over songs. Like we have Waka Flocka [Flame] on there — Schwarbs is a big Waka Flocka fan, so he will put Waka Flocka on there. And at times, if we get too much Waka, it gets worn out quickly. But there are other songs on there that come and go as post-game music. But the top four songs are always [Shouse’s] “Love Tonight,” [Calum Scott’s cover of] “Dancing on My Own,” [Trey Lewis’] “D–ked Down in Dallas” and then [Alabama’s] “Dixieland Delight.”
But we make trades during the year, right? And we try to make guys feel comfortable as soon as they get over. And that’s how “Dixieland Delight” got on there. We got D-Rob [David Robertson] traded over from the Cubs, and he was an Alabama guy, so we quickly put on “Dixieland Delight.” And it ended up sticking in 2023! But it’s just a good way of getting guys connected — especially, like, Latin players who there’s a language barrier with. So we have Latin songs on there as well, for people to enjoy.
Brandon Marsh #16 and Bryson Stott #5 place a cup on the head of Garrett Stubbs #21 of the Philadelphia Phillies as Stubs gives a post game interview after a win in a game against the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field on May 13, 2023 in Denver, Colorado.
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Do you add to it in the offseason?
No, I’ll listen to new music all the time. Unfortunately I feel like there hasn’t been a ton of great music coming out. I don’t know how you feel about that, but…
Well, you’re working for a very specific purpose — maybe people like the new Lana Del Rey album, but I’m sure that’s not gonna make it onto the post-game playlist.
No doubt. Yeah. I’ve been listening to — there’s a lot of good country music that comes out, but like you said, it’s not necessarily the vibe after a win to listen to friggin’ Chris Stapleton or like, a slow Morgan Wallen song or something. But we had big Dua Lipa love in 2022, starting with Kyle Gibson. And so the “Cold Heart” song got put on there. And that’s kind of the vibe we like to go with.
Do songs ever get nixed for being bad luck? Like if you hear a song before a big loss, or it’s the first song that gets played after a big loss, are you ever like, “All right, that song’s no longer part of the vibe, we gotta get it out of here?”
Well, so last year, we tried to get rid of “Dancing on My Own.” Which didn’t go very well at the beginning of the season. And so we ended up putting that back on. But we went through a number of different songs. I know that Juicy J was at one point getting played. I put on “Erryday” by Juicy J after wins. That quickly got axed. There was another J. Cole song that got played after wins — that was just a little too slow. And like, you’re looking around the league, there’s probably songs that get played that are in multiple locker rooms. So we try to keep it independent to ours. I’m sure at one point “All I Do Is Win” was just like the song that everyone played.
We try to stay away from the superstition part. Like, playing “Dancing on My Own” after wins isn’t a superstition for us — it’s just a good vibe. Everyone seems to be having a smile on their face. But also the connection that we got to have with the fans during that was pretty cool.
So I’m sure you’ve talked about it a million times by now, but when did you know that “Dancing on My Own” was connecting in that way?
Well, the funny thing is that all the music that got played in the locker room, not that it wasn’t supposed to get out of the locker room, but that was certainly not the intent at first. We basically were just playing certain songs, I started curating a playlist honestly just to make it easy to play the songs after the game — we could just click play on the playlist and then it would run through all the songs. At no point did I think the entire city was going to find my Spotify! And then realize that there was a “Phils Win” playlist. And then next thing I know, there was 1,000 people liking it, 5,000, 10,000, I think it’s up to like 20 or 25,000 now…
You’re almost up to 30 now.
OK, yeah. So that wasn’t the intent out the gate. But I think it’s a cool way for fans to kinda get a taste of what goes on in the locker room. I think fans enjoy seeing that side of our team. I think they also see that outside of the music, just how we interact with each other on the field. And we have a very unique, fun way of connecting with the people of Philly.
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That song specifically, though — when did you know that that was going to be the song that people most associated with you guys?
I don’t think we ever thought that people were going to associate themselves with it outside the locker room. I think we just kinda felt like it was a good vibe when we were listening to it inside the locker room. And then, very quickly, people found out that that was our song inside the locker room, and then they started connecting with it. That kind of just happened organically, which — I think that’s how the best things in life happen, right? You don’t really intend for them to be a certain way, but just over time, people just get drawn to a certain thing.
In general, just the vibe, the feeling that you get when you hear the song, is upbeat — Tiësto did a great job remixing it because obviously the original is a little slower. So I think the remix gives a good vibe, and all of a sudden you kinda get your head bobbin’, and it gives you good feelings inside, with the association of the winning part of it, along with just the sound that you get from listening to the song, is always positive.
I did notice, skimming the top of the playlist — and I’ve heard it in the locker room too — there’s a lot of dance remixes of non-dance songs. That seems to kind of be a sweet spot for you guys.
Yeah, I personally love bringing a little bit of house vibe to an old song. Seeing some of these new artists grabbing really great classics, and then remixing them with a little more modern house sounds that you weren’t necessarily able to make when they were making those songs, I really enjoy it.
So with 30,000 people following this playlist, do you ever hear it outside the locker room?
Well, after we would win we would go over to Xfinity Live, and immediately the DJ would start playing every single song from the playlist. We would celebrate in the locker room, and then afterwards we would go to Xfinity and celebrate again, and they would bring out those same songs. It was always fun watching the reaction of the fans to certain songs. My favorite song on the playlist [laughs] to have fun with is “D–ked Down in Dallas.”
I mean “Dancing on My Own” is obviously an incredible song, and associated with the whole city. But “D–ked Down in Dallas” is just such a fun song for all of us to have fun to, and whenever we’d go to Xfinity and watch everyone else sing along with it, it was hilarious to us.
Have you thought about what the next in line song would be if “Dancing on My Own” wasn’t working anymore?
I mean, we’ve thought about it plenty, right? We tried to get rid of it this last year. And I don’t even wanna use the words “get rid of,” but we tried to move on from it and find something new and fresh. And we ended up reverting back to it. I think the fans have certain feelings about bringing it back in 2024, which I totally understand — when you don’t win the World Series, a lot of fans feel like it’s not a success. And us players feel the same way, too. But there has been a lot of success — not just with the song, but with the team for the past few years — so we do have a lot of really good memories, and I hope that eventually we just do find a new song that gives us a good vibe and a new good energy that people can connect with.
An elder statesman of NBA stars with rapping side hustles, Hall of Fame center Shaquille O’Neal landed his first hit, “What’s Up Doc? (Can We Rock),” on MTV in 1993, and it peaked at No. 39 on the Billboard Hot 100. He has four other Hot 100 songs to his name and four Billboard 200 […]
LAS VEGAS — It turns out Kaskade found out he was DJing at the Super Bowl not too long before the rest of us did.
In fact, his first time seeing the elevated DJ platform in the stands behind the end zone where he would spin throughout the game on Sunday (Feb. 11) was that day, minutes before he performed a pre-game concert that soundtracked the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs warming up on the field.
“This will be my first moment. We’ll experience it together,” Kaskade (real name: Ryan Raddon) told Billboard with a smile as we shadowed him all day Sunday throughout Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium for his gig as the Super Bowl’s first in-game DJ — a job that was only formally announced by the NFL on Thursday after Tiësto had to back out due to a “personal family emergency” earlier that day. Kaskade’s primary team had arrived days earlier in Vegas while the DJ played a long-scheduled gig at Montreal’s Igloofest on Friday night to make sure that everything was ready for him, and after wrapping his first set on Sunday, he was happy to report of the previously mysterious DJ booth: “It all works. I’m like, ‘OK, it’s plugged in, there’s power, we’re good.’”
Kaskade said the trickiest part about the last-minute gig was weaving some pump-up song requests from the two Super Bowl teams into his setlist for their pre-game warm-ups, including a pair of Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s by Drake (“God’s Plan” and “Jimmy Cooks” with 21 Savage) and DJ Snake’s “Turn Down for What” featuring Lil Jon, who would be one of Usher’s surprise halftime show guests later that day. The most time-consuming part of incorporating the new songs? Making sure all the lyrics were safe for the Super Bowl’s family audience, Kaskade says.
The players clearly appreciated the tailored playlist, with the Chiefs’ Isiah Pacheco performing an impromptu end-zone dance to “God’s Plan” during warm-ups. (“Some of them were feeling it,” Kaskade laughed afterward.)
Along with the pre-game special requests, Kaskade also worked in some more esoteric choices, like Odd Mob and OMNOM’s “Losing Control.” And when it came time for his two DJ moments during the game — one between the first and second quarters and one between the third and fourth — Kaskade stuck to what he knows best: playing the vibey “Escape,” his 2023 Kx5 song with longtime collaborator deadmau5 (“Hi. I just played Escape to 100 million people,” Kaskade posted to X after), as well as his party-starter “Fun,” a 2019 team-up with Brohug and Mr. Tape featuring Madge. He also got a chance to enjoy a bit of the nail-biter game (which the Chiefs won in overtime), taking a seat right in front of his platform alongside his wife and daughters and the rest of his team during breaks.
For a closer look at a day in the life of a Super Bowl DJ, follow along with Billboard as we embed with Team Kaskade at the big game.
‘Can We Do This?’
This week in dance music: Skrillex, Flowdan, Fred again.. and Kylie Minogue all won dance Grammys, demonstrating the efficacy of the awards’ new pop dance category, Elements 2024 released a phase one lineup lead by Illenium, Slander, Liquid Stranger, Sophie Ellis-Bextor enlisted Pnau for a remix of her viral hit “Murder On The Danceflloor,” we shared exclusive Countdown 2024 sets and Tiësto dropped out of his Super Bowl in-game DJ gig this weekend and was swiftly replaced by Kaskade.
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See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
And also, these were the best new dance tracks of the week.
Anyma, “Pictures Of You”
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Matteo Milleri, who is one half of Tale of Us and also makes music as Anyma, today drops “Pictures Of You,” a three-minute slice of music that very much falls in the dark, machinistic but also somehow very emotive realm that Tale Of Us has carved out and which Anyma’s work expands upon. The track is out via Tale Of Us’ Afterlife Records and comes ahead of Anyma plays at Ultra Music Festival in Miami next month and at Coachella in April.
Shygirl, Club Shy
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Cool, pulsing, sophisticated and often ecstatic, Shygirl’s new Club Shy EP is of course literally music for the club, but the title also has a figurative quality, with the English artist packing this metaphorical venue with collaborators including Boys Noize (who delivers on the previously released “tell me”), along with Empress Of, SG Lewis, Kingdom, Cosha and Lola Zouaï. Each artists brings their own respective flavor, but the six-track project is ultimately lead by Shygirl’s strobe-lit vision. The project is out via Because Music.
Above & Beyond feat. Zoe Johnson, “Crazy Love”
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Two years after debuting the song in front of 20,000 fans at a show in Los Angeles, Above & Beyond’s “Crazy Love” gets an official release via Anjunabeats. The song is everything there is to love about Above & Beyond compressed into four minutes, with the trio building the same type of soaring trance production that have made them favorites for nearly 25 years years and infusing it with the same depth of a emotion that’s allowed the the guys to officially title their their radio show and live sets “group therapy.” The not-so-secret weapon on “Crazy Love” is Zoë Johnston, a longtime collaborator who’s voice brings the song to another level of tearjerk impact.
Louis the Child feat. Memba, “I’m Not Giving Up”
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The gentlemen of Louis The Child dip their toes into the pop punk revival with emo-evoking vocals that juxtapose against a thick synth build and breakdown that, the pair say, “feels very signature to us, it’s big and hits you like a ton of bricks.” A collab with New York City-based duo Memba — who LTC calls “some of the most talented producers we’ve ever worked with” — “I’m Not Giving Up” is out on Interscope Records.
DJ Minx, “Taking It Back”
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Detroit icon DJ Minx returns to Diplo’s Higher Ground label with “Taking It Back,” a sonic and lyrical crash course on the back in the day dance underground. With deadpan delivery, Minx declares that “we’re taking it back to the old school” before going on about “techno and house under one roof, underground raves, ground rules, acid house, bold moves, no cell phones, we were just cool” over a tough, stuttering synth line. Minx will play Detroit’s Movement festival in May and other summer stops in Portugal and the U.K.