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ODESZA‘s 2022 The Last Goodbye Tour was, by all metrics, a smashing success. The 27-date run, which hit arenas and amphitheaters across North America, grossed $25.6 million and sold 395,000 tickets, according to numbers provided by Billboard Boxscore. This run — behind the duo’s The Last Goodbye LP, which hit No. 11 on the Billboard […]
Calvin Harris claims the mark for the most No. 1s in the history of Billboard’s Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart all to himself, as “Miracle,” with Ellie Goulding, rises to the top of the tally dated May 20. Harris adds his 13th leader on the list, which began in August 2003, moving one ahead of both David Guetta and Rihanna.
The trancey “Miracle” is Goulding’s sixth topper and second with Harris, after “Outside” in 2015. Here’s a look at Calvin Harris’s record 13 Dance/Mix Show Airplay No. 1s.
Title, Weeks at No. 1, Year(s):
“Miracle,” with Ellie Goulding, one to-date, 2023
“Promises,” with Sam Smith, two, 2018
“One Kiss,” with Dua Lipa, 10, 2018
“This Is What You Came For,” feat. Rihanna, 12, 2016
“How Deep Is Your Love,” with Disciples, four, 2015
“Outside,” feat. Ellie Goulding, six, 2015
“Blame,” feat. John Newman, six, 2014
“Summer,” 13, 2014
“Thinking About You,” feat. Ayah Marar, one, 2013
“Sweet Nothing,” feat. Florence Welch, nine, 2013
“Let’s Go,” feat. Ne-Yo, 10, 2012
“We Found Love,” Rihanna feat. Harris, 14, 2011-12
“Feel So Close,” eight weeks at No. 1, 2012
“Miracle” is drawing core-dance airplay on KMVQ-HD2 San Francisco, Music Choice’s Dance/EDM channel and WCPY (Dance Factory FM) Chicago in the May 5-11 tracking week, according to Luminate. (The Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart measures radio airplay on a select group of full-time dance stations, along with plays during mix shows on around 60 top 40-formatted reporters.)
Additionally on Dance/Mix Show Airplay, Steve Aoki, Galantis and Hayley Kiyoko bound 16-10 with “Hungry Heart,” the sixth, 10th and first top 10 for each respective act.
Shifting to the multi-metric Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray lock in top Streaming Gainer honors with “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” (5-4), after the song’s official video premiered May 5. The track, a reworking of Haddaway’s 1993 hit “What Is Love,” earned 3.6 million official streams in the United States in the week ending May 11, up 15%. It also drew 7.3 million radio airplay audience impressions, up 13%, and sold 1,000 downloads, up 20%.
Concurrently, “Baby” bumps 13-6 on the Dance/Electronic Streaming Songs chart, giving Guetta his ninth top 10, Anne-Marie her second and Leray her first. It also pushes 5-3 on Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales.
Sticking with Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, viral sensation Odetari debuts at No. 8 with “Good Loyal Thots.” His second top 10 in quick succession, after “Narcissistic Personality” (No. 10, May 6), garnered 3.4 million streams in its opening frame. That figure also sparks a No. 11 start on Dance/Electronic Streaming Songs.
Meanwhile, Depeche Mode claims the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart’s top Sales Gainer award for “Ghosts Again” (30-19). The lead single from the act’s LP Memento Mori is up 103%, following the May 5 release of official remixes by Chris Liebing and Luke Slater, Miss Grit, Davide Rossi and more. “Ghosts” also gathered 542,000 streams, up 52%.
In Billboard’s monthly emerging dance artist spotlight we get to know Salute, the Vienna-born, Manchester-based artist making colorful, comfy club tunes.
The Project: Shield EP, released earlier this month on Ninja Tune’s Technicolour imprint.
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The Origin: Salute, born Felix Nyajo, was raised in Vienna, Austria, in what they describe as a traditional working-class suburb. “Pretty chill, not too much happening,” they say. “Summers were super hot and the winds were super cold. It was good.”
Between their parents and older brother, the household playlist rotated American gospel, highlife, R&B, soul and hip-hop — but as far as their dance music influences go, video games were crucial. FIFA Street 2 and SSX brimmed with the exciting, frenetic sounds of jungle, grime and U.K. garage and inspired Salute to learn production.
When they were old enough to get in the mix of Vienna’s small club scene, they quickly hit their ceiling. “I kind of felt a bit suffocated, because I knew nothing was gonna come of me staying there and trying to have a career in music,” they say. To get closer to the industry, they moved to the U.K. in 2014. Going to clubs every weekend served as a crash course in U.K. dance music, from breaks and bass music to house and techno.
Over the next five years they continued releasing music, including the My Heart mixtape and Condition trilogy, based on themes of mourning. Salute’s sonic shift across these early releases is evident, from syrupy post-dubstep instrumentals inspired by Hudson Mohawke and Mount Kimbie to an acutely more clubby vibe. In September of 2021, their track “Joy” launched Atlantic Records U.K.’s dance imprint Signal > > Supply. And in what must be a career milestone for any U.K. artist, “Joy” also appeared on an episode of Love Island U.K.
The Sound: Salute, 27, describes their style as “fast and soulful house music,” a catch-all term encompassing their many influences including U.K. garage, techno, classic house and French house. It’s also incredibly warm, inviting and cozy — it just feels good.
The Record: Shield is Salute’s first EP on Ninja Tune’s Technicolour imprint. To some, the title connotes visions of protection and defense — literal armor. For Salute, “It’s just comfort. Most of these songs just feel very comfortable to me… Obviously a lot of them are very, but at the same time they feel like a blanket.”
The EP’s opening track, “Run Away With You,” sets this tone with a soaring mix of synths, vocal snippets and accents that, like a sunrise, inspire a mood of promise and possibility. Over a brisk rhythm and ballooning bassline, vocalist No Rome sings, “I would run away with you if you would run away with me, too.” Meanwhile, buzzing lead single “Wait For It” anticipates the ecstasy of partying all night. Made around the same time as “Joy,” it sat in Salute’s vault for years, just waiting for the right moment for release. Similarly, “Feels Like My Hands Are On Fire” has existed in several iterations over the past five years. Salute finally finished it with help from The 1975’s George Daniel, whose careful restructuring added a greater pop appeal.
“Peach” with Sammy Virji is the most recently produced of the bunch. A rolling bassline and crooning vocals coated in a silk finish, it rightfully caused a stir when Salute debuted it at their Boiler Room set last December. The song is also a callback to 2012-2013, the years they call “one of the golden eras of dance music … I feel like music back then was just super fun, and I think that’s one thing that kind of got lost over the years, up until recently.”
Managed By: Will Frost and Luke James of London’s House Of Us
Management Strategy: “Broadly, the strategy is always adapting,” says Frost, “but when it comes to Felix’s records, it’s always been having a huge degree of trust which we’ve built up over the years of working so closely together, around ten years now. When they’re putting together a project, I have complete trust in their vision for the body of work whether that’s creatively in the visuals or the music itself, and they’ve always given me space to help them with the right people to either write a vocal or get the right mix engineer or feature on the record and it all shows in Shield, which is some of their best work to date.
“Now with the excellent Luke on the management team, the strategy has very much become building a fanbase who will come to watch Felix play. Felix’s sets are so incredible, and the reception and interaction with the crowd because of their skill and energy is unmatched, so we want to maximize that by putting on amazing shows, capturing the atmosphere of the night and building an audience that will buy tickets to experience it for themselves — we are seeing it grow rapidly over the last few months globally and have some really exciting plans as we also develop it in to a live show that still maintains that energy from their DJ sets.”
First Song That Made Salute Love Dance Music: They cite Lethal Bizzle’s 2005 single “Kickback,” which appeared on the FIFA Street 2 soundtrack, as their introduction to grime. “I was completely blown away by it ’cause it was unlike anything I’ve ever heard,” they say. The moment led them down a YouTube rabbit hole where they discovered artists like Dizzee Rascal and Wiley on the way to dubstep, garage and the wider web of U.K. dance music.
Advice Every New Dance Artist Needs to Hear: “Just make as much music as possible. You can’t really skip that step. There’s no way to like, just overnight, become really good. If you’re starting out, what you’ll naturally tend to do is to imitate an artist that you really like, which is a good way to learn production. I actually encourage it.
“But after a while, you’re gonna have to make a decision about what it is you want to do in music. The only way you can do that is by thinking very intentionally about the space you want to take up. That requires asking yourself questions about what your taste is, what you want to achieve as a DJ or a producer, whether you want to DJ at all, what you want your place to be, why you enjoy making dance music, what it is about dance music that makes you happy. I feel like that allows you to develop a sense of identity, which is something that people who listen to music can latch onto… I think people can really sense when the music comes from somewhere special.”
Why They Make Music: “The most important thing when I make music is I’m having fun doing it, and that makes me really happy. Figuring out how to achieve that has been one of the biggest things for me… putting an idea from your brain into a computer is the funnest part of it all.”
Up Next: Salute is currently on the U.S. leg of their international spring/summer tour, with stops Thursday (May 18) in San Francisco, Friday (May 19) in Los Angeles and their first EDC Las Vegas set this Saturday (May 20.) “I’d hear about [EDC] on podcasts that I was listening to like, ten years ago,” they say. “When I got the offer to play it, I kind of laughed to myself ‘cause like, that’s actually quite crazy.”
After Vegas, it’s non-stop until September: Salute is scheduled to play a full slate of festivals — Parklife, Glastonbury and Defected Croatia among them — while also touring Asia for the first time and later playing Ibiza’s lauded Circoloco.
San Francisco’s Portola festival is coming back hot in its second year, with a lineup headed by Eric Prydz and Skrillex. Announced today (May 17), the lineup puts Prydz in the Friday night headlining slot with his lauded visual spectacle HOLO and Skrillex topping the bill for Saturday. The festival returns to the city’s Pier […]
“To be clear, there’s almost no commercial incentive for me to do this,” says Moby, breaking into a chuckle.
The Grammy-nominated electronic musician is 57 years old, his well-cropped beard more white than gray and his head as bald as it was in 1999 when his breakthrough album Play made him an MTV mainstay.
A “vegan” neck tattoo peeks out from his gray hooded sweatshirt, which stands out just enough from his white wall and beige window curtain as we talk via Zoom, but his minimalist approach to decor stands in contrast to his penchant for intellectual verbosity and philosophical musings.
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“At the risk of sounding melodramatic, one of my goals in life is to never go on tour again as long as I live,” he says. “It’s not like I’ve rerecorded these in the interest of promoting an upcoming tour. Also, in the spirit of honesty and full disclosure, it probably costs more to make these orchestral records with tons of guests and fancy orchestras than will ever be generated in revenue. So it’s purely… and maybe I even feel a little guilty about this because it seems quite selfish… it’s just a labor of love.”
That labor is materialized in Resound NYC, an ambitious album on which Moby recreates 15 of his biggest hits and personal favorites with orchestral accompaniment and a powerful cast of vocalists. Grammy-winning jazz singer Gregory Porter, Lady Blackbird, The Temper Trap’s Doug Mandagi and Pussycat Dolls lead singer Nicole Scherzinger all make appearances on a tracklist that includes “Extreme Ways,” “South Side,” “In This World,” “When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die” and more.
It follows in the footsteps of 2021’s Reprise, which was also released on the 125-year-old classical music label, Deutsche Grammophon. Yet Resound NYC feels bigger and bolder, focusing specifically on songs written and released during Moby’s time living in New York City, a period encompassing 1994 to 2010.
“One thing that New York really taught me is how wonderful and exciting juxtaposition can be when it shouldn’t exist,” Moby says. “The fact that New York is a filthy, dirty, hard place that’s also beautiful and can be very elegant and poignant. Especially in the ‘70s and ‘80, walking down the street and hearing hip-hop juxtaposed with someone playing classical cello, juxtaposed with salsa, juxtaposed with Arabic music. I think that encoded itself into my DNA to make me think culture should not be siloed. Culture should be a melting pot. It should be this weird, unexpected surprise that if [the parts] were a little bit off wouldn’t work.”
Resound NYC embodies that mix of sonic flavors, bringing new depth and grandeur to beloved fan favorites, offering fresh and welcomed dimensions to familiar melodies. The album opens with the hopeful tinkering of a piano on “In My Heart” and immediately explodes into a wall of sound that ebbs and swells with furious passion until the final notes of closing track “Walk With Me.”
Moby’s career-spanning examinations of hope and sadness, mortality and exultation, feel richer and more alive as his palette of blues, jazz, funk, rock and gospel are recreated by a sonic army, each song hitting new dramatic heights to elicit tears or dance freakouts, or both.
“When I was really young, like nine years old, I studied music theory, classical music and jazz, and I didn’t love it, because it was more technical and academic than it was emotional,” Moby says. “Oftentimes the most powerful emotional expression can be the most rudimentary. You think of blues or punk rock. Think of Neil Young; very simple music that’s very emotional. I try to take that ethos, that spirit of almost reductive emotional simplicity and apply that to an orchestra — even though an orchestra by definition is complicated.”
“Simple” seems a strange word to describe Resound NYC’s expansive and maximalist layers of sound, but sit with each instrument’s part, and you’ll hear how a series of long-held notes and straightforward rhythms build one piece at a time to create moments of eruption and release.
“I find myself really resenting art and music that doesn’t have that generosity of spirit,” Moby says, “meaning the willingness to try and reach the audience, whether it’s one person or a lot of people, in a way that potentially — presumptuously — might be rewarding for them. A lot of musicians, sadly, are very afraid of emotion, like the pursuit of cool is more important than the pursuit of beauty or the pursuit of emotion. I, embarrassingly, would much rather ignore the pursuit of cool and simply try to create beauty in so far as I can.”
Moby no longer lives in New York. He moved to Los Angeles in 2010, a few years after putting himself through rehab to kick increasingly problematic addictions to alcohol and drugs. Fans who’ve read his autobiographies Porcelain and Then It Fell Apart know how dark and uncomfortable his struggles became. In the latter especially, the producer writes in detail about sloppy and desperate nights spent chasing fame, glamour, ego and sex before finally succumbing to depression and even a 2008 suicide attempt.
Just as with writing those books, the task of transcribing, recomposing and rerecording some of his seminal works from that time has been a strange mirror.
“It’s like being reintroduced to yourself, but you’re sort of a stranger,” he says. “I was a mess, and sometimes it was a fun, dramatic mess. Other times it was just an embarrassing mess. There’s a temptation to be dismissive and say ‘I was just young and stupid,’ but that was still me. I was that awkward person making bad choices and having bad priorities. To lead a full integrated life, sadly, you have to be willing to look at that Jungian shadow self. I always thought the Jungian shadow self was your cool, violent, sexy, dark, goth self. But I’ve come to realize mine is just awkward, uncomfortable and probably talks too fast.”
Living in L.A. has given the artist a chance to refresh his own lifestyle and perspective. It’s also given him a front-row seat to the cartoonish attempts its citizens make to grasp ageless glamour, “from face-tuning to vampire facials.”
“I’ve been having this conversation a lot because of the rise of A.I., but there is a psychological, philosophical, existential aspect to [the] many ways in which humans feel they can technically improve upon themselves,” he says. “It’s so much more interesting when people accept their humanity, accept aging, the vulnerability [and] frailty. True strength, as far as I’m concerned, is both accepting the entropy that comes along with the human condition and being willing to be seen in that vulnerable, human state. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there, but one of my goals is to push myself to try and express that, either on my own or working with other people.”
He speaks at length about his love of the human voice for this very reason. It’s the instrument that best reveals the nuanced levels of emotional complexity.
“It’s almost comical the number of singers I’ve worked with and the weird diversity,” he says, “everybody from David Bowie to Ozzy Osborne to Britney Spears. I can’t even begin to think of the hundreds if not possibly thousands of singers I’ve worked with, all in pursuit of that vocal beauty and power. When it works, it’s remarkable. When it doesn’t, it’s incredibly frustrating.”
One of his favorite tricks? Recording a singer’s first few practice takes under the auspices that he’ll “do the real passes later,” knowing he’ll most likely get a more vulnerable performance when the singer thinks they’re not in the hot seat. Technical perfection is so rarely the harbinger of emotion. Like Moby says, “Would you rather listen to a 19-year-old pop singer with perfect pitch who’s been autotuned within an inch of their life? Or Leonard Cohen singing ‘Hallelujah?’”
No such ruses were needed to capture the soulful vocals on Resound NYC’s version of “Run On.” One of the barest and most stripped-down tracks on the LP, the tune originally started with a big brass section, live drums, percussion, a quintet, electric guitar, bass and piano.
“I had this big version of the song done, and [singer] Danielle Ponder was visiting her dad, who’s 89 years old and very ill, in his hospital bed,” Moby says. “He remembered singing this song when he was a little boy, so she held her iPhone up to him while he sang it. She sent me the recording, and I threw away everything I had done for that song and rewrote it around his vocal. Then she came in and did a duet with her dad’s hospital bed iPhone recording.
“In terms of authenticity? Dear God,” Moby continues. “I could listen to just an isolated acappella of him singing that song. It’s so special.”
When he isn’t seeking to expose the gooiest parts of humanity on record, Moby’s been keeping busy recording his Moby Pod podcast and launching a film and TV production company called Little Walnut.
The team recently released Punk Rock Vegan Movie, a full-length documentary that explores the little-discussed connection between the rise of plant-based lifestyles and the hardcore scenes of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Moby narrated, directed and soundtracked the effort, which includes on-camera chats with members of Bad Brains, the Misfits, Crass, Fugazi, The Damned, The Germs and many more. (Punk Rock Vegan Movie is available to watch on YouTube.)
“As time has passed, I’ve come to realize that my day job is actually animal rights activism,” Moby says. “That’s my primary purpose, and part of that was making this movie and giving it away for free. I wanted to try and do my little part to remind people that principles are good, and compromising principles is generally a bad idea… This algorithm accommodating culture that we live in it, it’s making my brain hurt. Who on their deathbed wants to remember, ‘Oh, I did a mildly effective job accommodating algorithms invented by someone in China.’ That’s not a good life.”
The decision to retire from touring is part of his own eternal search for that philosophical “good life.” The whole idea of moving from plane to green room to stage to hotel over and over again feels “unhealthy” and “uncomfortable.” Instead, he’s content to sit in his studio “which looks a lot like a monastic cell,” transcribing his life’s work into orchestral movements, recording podcasts, writing activist documentaries and just generally being.
“I really love sleeping in my bedroom here with the windows open, waking up, having a smoothie and going for a hike,” he says. “It doesn’t pay well, and there’s no ego gratification there, but it just feels so much healthier and nicer than waking up on a tour bus in a parking lot somewhere, sitting backstage waiting for some ego validation. I am thrilled that I finally ended up in a banal place, that I’m very happy.”
LP Giobbi is busy as hell. After opening for her musical besties Sofi Tukker in Mexico City, playing a Coachella pool party and then the festival itself in the span of three days, it’s reasonable she’d be tired.
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And another big week is looming. Before her Coachella weekend two set she’ll open for Yaeji in L.A. and play two shows in Denver. After Coachella, she’ll trek to rave mecca Ibiza to open for Bedouin and speak at the IMS conference, immediately after which she’ll circle back across the globe to Guatemala for Empire Music Festival.
Despite this insanely busy life on the road — she hasn’t been back to her home in Austin, Texas since January — LP is bright-eyed and enthusiastic. Her presence is both energizing and grounding, reflective of who she is as an artist: joyful, optimistic, supportive, inclusive, self-assured and driven. Despite having just over an hour before she’s due onstage at L.A.’s Novo theater, she takes her time while sitting down with Billboard to discuss her new album.
Over the past few years, as she picked up steam with a string of euphoric singles (including “Sinner” with Bklava, “Somebody To Love” with Ben Kim, “Say A Little Prayer” with Amazonian Rockstar, “Carry Us” with Kaleena Zanders), she had over 13 labels reach out to her, eventually finding a home with Ninja Tune’s Counter Records. All the while — on trains and planes and in stolen moments in airports, hotels and rented studio space — she was writing her debut album Light Places, out this past Friday, May 12.
The album is a kaleidoscopic sonic tapestry of synths, percussion, LP’s signature piano riffs and a chorus of uplifting female vocalists including Sofi Tukker, Caroline Byrne, Little Jet and Monogem. There’s a strong undercurrent of joy throughout, yet many of the tracks showcase a different side of LP’s sound, particularly the stripped-down beauty of opener “If Love Is A Skill” with her longtime champion Sofi Tukker, along with the psychedelic sun-soaked vibe of “All In A Dream” with DJ Tennis and Joseph Ashworth and the sweet melancholy of “All I Need.”
The recently announced All In An Airstream Tour will see LP and DJ Tennis travel in an Airstream to locations across the U.S. including Joshua Tree, Berkeley, Big Sur, Asheville and New Orleans for pop-up performances. LP’s 2023 tour schedule also includes big festival sets at Lighting in a Bottle, Tomorrowland, Defected Croatia and Ibiza, along with a stage takeover of her Femme House brand at Elements Music & Arts Festival.
Beyond additional dates in Ibiza and Brazil, a residency at Superstition in Austin and multiple treks across North America, she’ll also be serving up her Grateful Dead-inspired Dead House shows for official Dead & Company afterparties — which, as the daughter of Deadheads, is something she’s still freaking out about. Jerry Garcia’s estate also recently tapped her to remix his 1972 debut solo album via Garcia (Remixed), a trippy marriage of LP’s love of jam bands, psych rock and dance music.
It’s all wonderful — and a lot to unpack. Below, the producer breaks it down.
Did having the format of the album and the pressure of it being your first help you hone in on your sound or the way that you worked on the songs?
Up until now, I’ve been a singles artist. The best thing about this process for me was that it allowed me to write B-sides [lets out sigh of relief], tracks that didn’t need to be hugely successful on Spotify or have a vocal hook in the first 10 seconds.
I wrote most of the album on planes, trains and in hotels. Then I flew to Paris and got in the studio with [DJ] Tennis and [Joseph] Ashworth and [Michael] Cheever. We took all the MIDI parts and rerouted them through vintage synths; we were in this amazing studio that had every vintage synth possible. We put everything into the same world sonically. We also recorded live drummers and layered that with electronic drums.
This album isn’t necessarily for the club, it’s more of a musical journey. I actually ended up making club edits for pretty much all of the tracks, which are the versions I play out, but the album itself got to stand alone and fueled me in a different musical way.
You talked about being in motion with a lot of the album, but where did you start and how did you know when you were done?
Well, you never know. You know you’re done when the label’s like, “We need the f—ing album.” When I signed this deal, I really took my time. I had 13 label offers. I picked the label thinking, “How do I want this music to identify? Who do I want this music to identify with? How do I want it to be seen or shaped?” So, when I landed on Ninja Tune, I had an idea of how deep I wanted to go with the album versus a more mainstream dance label.
I had hundreds of bits of songs and maybe 50 tracks. And I started road testing some of them to see what’s working for the dance floor, and maybe what’s not; I wanted to balance both. Along the listening process, the album told me what it needed. I just had to listen.
The album sounds like you sat down and spent time with it.
Oh, my God, I wish. I’m always writing and always touring. I’m hearing more artists all over the world and I’m deeply influenced by what I’ve heard and where I am. The music I’m writing now is very much for the club, I don’t want any vocals on it. It’s sort of the opposite direction [of the album]. It’s been fun to see where this body of music takes me.
I wanted to talk about “All I Need” and its interlude with the sweet voicemail — is that your grandma?
It’s actually [my tour manager] Xander’s grandma. We had just played this amazing gay music festival, Utopia, in Isla Mujeres. The day after, the promoter took us out on a boat, and Sophie was there and we were having drinks. It was one of those “life is good” moments. Xander’s grandma Shirley called him the next day and [left a voicemail saying], “I hope you got a good tour, I saw you sitting on a boat with a drink in your hand, looking like a millionaire.”
Light Places is named after your dad’s favorite Grateful Dead lyrics.
It’s from the song “Scarlet Begonias”: “Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.” I was in Australia and was feeling extremely ungrounded and untethered. When I’m home, my dad and I pass a notebook back and forth to write a poem together. I called him and asked if we could do that when I’m on the road. Now, we write a poem before every show I play. It brings me back home. On his 70th birthday, I made it into a book for him, and it’s now a merch item. It’s my favorite thing that I do.
That’s so great.
I was like, “Dad, I need a name for my album. What are some of your favorite Grateful Dead lyrics?” He sent me this huge email where he broke down all of his favorite lyrics to different songs. I had just finished a gig in Ibiza, it was four in the morning, and I’m reading his email. I was deliriously tired and read that line and “light places” danced in front of me. I realized, “that’s LP.” It’s so funny how language can give meaning to us. I realized that’s what I want to do, create emotionally light places for people.
When I first started pursuing music, I didn’t know if it was a worthy enough endeavor. I was in school and did a lot of women’s empowerment studies and wanted to be an activist. My mom said, “The Grateful Dead shows that me and your father went to would hold me through and are what gave me so much joy in my life. If that’s what you do, that’s enough.” That is what I want people to feel when they leave my show.
How have your parents inspired you?
I dedicated the album to them. “Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places when you look at it right” is kind of an ethos of how they raised us. We’d come home from school like, “This thing happened and it sucked,” and my dad would always tell us [the tale of] a guy and he breaks his leg in the summertime, but then there’s a war and everybody but him gets drafted.
They also really instilled the importance of live music in me at a very young age. There was always music playing in the house and we were always going to shows. That was kind of our church, standing in a community of people, being part of something greater than yourself. Also, they’re front row for everything. Every iteration of everything that I’ve done, they’ve been there cheering me on.
I played with Dead & Company and there’s a great video that somebody took where my mom is wearing my merch, riding the rail and as the song drops, she just starts head banging and smacks the person next to her.
What was it like playing with Dead & Company?
It was crazy. It’s Dead & Company’s last tour, and I’m doing their after parties in some key markets. I got to introduce my parents to Bob Weir, their hero. My mom said to him, “Thank you so much for all the joy you’ve given my family over so many years.” And he put his hand to his heart and said “The pleasure is all mine” with the most sincerity in the world. Deadheads are f—ing crazy; that fan base is so intense. To have toured and done this for 60 years and to have heard that and still “hand-to-heart” feel that way was mind-blowing. It was such an inspirational moment to me.
And you remixed one of Jerry’s albums. How did you get connected with them?
I became a female producer and in order to be taken seriously, I started wearing baggy clothes. It’s really f—ed up. My parents gave me their vintage Grateful Dead shirts, so I started wearing those, and children of Deadheads started connecting with me. In fact, DJ Tennis and I became friends because I went to one of his shows and he was wearing a Grateful Dead shirt.
A friend was working in a studio and saw that I was wearing these shirts and sent me some of their stems. When I was livestreaming and wanted to make it interesting for myself, I took their guitars and reworked and re-pitched them and started sampling them in my sequencer and layering them over different things. I would take Jerry’s voice and warp it and start playing around with that over other tracks.
I did a livestream that Bob Weir was also on, and his manager saw my set and called him. The Garcia estate — his daughter, Trixie Garcia — reached out to me and asked if I wanted to do an official remix for the 50th anniversary of his first solo album, which was crazy.
Jerry’s voice is like my uncle. It’s the voice that I heard the most in my house growing up. It was overwhelming, and an honor. Then they asked me to play at their festival and do these after parties for the last tour.
When you got asked to do the remix album, were you worried about messing with it?
For sure, the pressure was so intense and so real. There are some old school Deadheads that f—ing hate what I did, and they were not afraid to let me know. At first, that made me really sad [because] I’m just trying to bring this music to my community. But I had a few amazing moments that made that not matter to me.
I played my first Dead House show in Eugene, where I’m from, and this father and son flew in from L.A. and New York to come to the show. Afterwards, the dad pulled me aside and was like, “We’re a dysfunctional family. My son and I do not get along, and we hate each other’s music. I’m a Deadhead and he’s a raver. This was the first two hours that we’ve been in a room and shared happiness, affection and joy together. Thank you so much for providing that.”
You occupy this psychedelic space in dance music that is very fresh and inviting. Is that intentional or just a product of who you are, and the music that you were raised on?
It’s intentional in the way that I had to work hard to find myself and be okay with myself. Once I let go of needing to be cool, or following other people’s [ideas of] what’s cool in dance music right now, it [became] so natural to me. I grew up a jam band kid. Once I finally was like “this is who I am,” it started flowing more naturally and was way more fun.
Can you speak to your creative relationship and friendship with Sofi Tukker?
I owe a lot to them. The biggest currency you can be gifted is belief. And they did that from the very beginning. They saw me play a horrible DJ set, I didn’t even know how to DJ yet, and I was opening up for them at an afterparty at a festival. I was in a band at the time. They were like, “We loved your energy, we want you to go on tour with us.” They were doing their first tour and had just released “Drinkee.”
I literally learned how to DJ in front of their loving audience. I was so f—ing bad, and they gave me so much love and support. I’d get offstage and Tucker would give me some tips and talk me through the set. They literally built stages for me and started a label [Animal Talk] for me to release music. They have supported me every single step of the way. Their friendship and support have meant the world to me. Seeing the power that artists can have on another artist’s career was a huge influence for me to start Femme House and pay that forward.
What’s the next era of Femme House? Where are you taking it? It’s grown so much.
That’s a really good question and also overwhelming. My co-founder Lauren Spaulding and I have tried to do dream sessions, but I couldn’t even dream that this was possible. I’m hoping it naturally reveals itself. I’ve sort of spent my whole life driving and grinding, and now I’m really hoping that I’m in a phase where I can lean into the more knowing feminine energy and wait for it to come to me.
One day, I’d love to have a [Femme House] festival and all that stuff. Education is an important part of why there are so few female producers, as is visual representation. So, we’ve done a lot of stage takeovers and live activations, that’s been a big focus for us the last few years. We want to meet more cool people who believe in this mission and work with them.
What has helped you the most in getting to this point? Did getting the right team impact where you’re at?
I always say I won the lottery twice. Once when I was born to my parents, and then again when I got my piano teacher. That has continued to happen, via the people I met in my life who have supported and encouraged me and shown up and given me opportunities. That’s mostly why I’m here. I do work my ass off, but it takes so much more than that.
I have a really, really good team now. My day-to-day Julie is a beast. I’m gonna give a ton of credit to Xander. I would not be here without him, on an emotional and physical level. He does what I do, except his job is way worse. He has to be the first one up and the last one to bed and always shows up with a smile.
Do you dream of a Billboard hit?
No, I really don’t. Fame is a funny thing. The tiny bit that I’ve experienced of it, I’m like, “no.” At the end of the day, I want to be on my deathbed really proud of my art.
ILLENIUM bows at No. 1 on Billboard’s consumption-based Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart (dated May 13) with his self-titled set. ILLENIUM earned 17,000 equivalent album units, including 7,000 from traditional album sales, in the April 28-May 4 tracking week, according to Luminate.
It’s ILLENIUM’s second-best sales week yet, trailing only the debut frame of his first No. 1, Ascend (25,000 units; Aug. 31, 2019). ILLENIUM now owns three total No. 1s, as his new entry follows Fallen Embers (one week, 2021) and Ascend (eight weeks, 2019). All six of his chart entries have hit the top 10, a history that also includes Ascend (Remixes) (No. 5, 2020), Awake (No. 3, 2017) and Ashes (No. 6, 2016).
ILLENIUM’s start halts Beyoncé’s 24-week streak at No. 1, which began last November, with Renaissance (No. 2; 13,000 units, down 7%). Dating to the chart’s 2001 inception, no album has logged more consecutive weeks at No. 1 beginning with its debut week. Plus, 24 weeks in a row at No. 1 mark the most for any album, a feat also achieved only by Lady Gaga’s The Fame (December 2009-May 2010). The Fame leads all albums in total weeks at No. 1, with 175 since its 2008 release.
ILLENIUM yields nine new entries on the multi-metric Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, led by “Eyes Wide Shut,” with Avril Lavigne and Travis Barker (No. 9). With those, all 16 ILLENIUM tracks have hit the chart, as the other seven tracks on the album debuted previously.
“Eyes,” however, is ILLENIUM’s first top 10 from the LP and the eighth in his career. It’s also his 57th total charted title since the chart originated in January 2013, tying him with Marshmello for the third-most, after David Guetta (78) and Kygo (62). “Eyes” marks the first appearance on the chart for Lavigne and the third (and first top 10) for Barker.
“Eyes” earned 2.2 million official streams and sold 500 downloads in the United States in the tracking week, also good for starts on the Dance/Electronic Streaming Songs (No. 18) and Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales (No. 11) charts.
Grimes is fully aware that her way is not necessarily the path most people would choose. In a conversation with Julia Fox on the model’s Forbidden Fruits Spotify podcast this week, the singer dove into cancel culture and why her unique choices often get her on society’s do-not-call list.
“I think it’s fairly obvious… I’m very easy to cancel and canceled very often,” Grimes said while explaining why the traditional album promotional cycle of release-press-tour-TV/radio appearances just has never worked for her. “I’ve always been exceptionally canceled. People call me a ‘techno-fascist’… I agree a lot of things have been mishandled and we’re in this giant hiccup into a different part of civilization that is extremely unprecedented.”
In this brave new world, Grimes said it’s sometimes unclear where ethical boundaries exist, while fully admitting that she’s said some “dumb stuff” in the past. “I say a lot of dumb stuff… above average I’d say,” Grimes told Fox, who countered, “you say a lot of smart stuff too!”
“I think we need a better discourse… the way I wish people would approach me in better faith — I approach everyone in good faith — if people are being hateful on the internet those people are mad because they want a better world,” Grimes offered.
The conversation, of course, also touched on Grimes’ recent deep dive into AI on what she described as a “data collecting and spy mission” in her new hometown in the Bay Area to find out what’s happening in the space these days. “I’m pretty for it, I would say I’m fairly optimistic, I think there are some potential bad outcomes but I don’t think it’s constructive to even discuss that publicly per se,” she said, noting that too much talk could scare a potentially not super-informed public.
The tech-savvy singer then tried to explain neural nets and machine learning to Fox, lamenting that there are too much scary depictions of AI in the media these days that are freaking people out. “I think right now there is sorta a moral imperative to make more positive AI depictions because it’s literally training on the data. It will see itself on how we are seeing it right now, in many ways, and it’s a concern that is brought up often,” she said.
Grimes also delved into how she sees AI applying to the music industry at a time when she has opened up her music to the general public in an experiment in which she has promised to split profits 50/50 with anyone who uses her voice on an original AI song. “I think the engineers who create the tools that we use are often very under appreciated – all music right now is pretty much a dialogue between the engineers and the artists. We have just been given a plethora of tools that are very unprecedented,” she said of what she sees as the democritization of music.
“Over the last 15 years of music, we’ve seen a lot more regular people, not just people who’ve been christened by the labels,” she said. “You go on TikTok and you see all these kids making stuff in their bedrooms, this is the result of engineering and technology, and this has been a thing that is like really beautiful for our culture.”
The singer touched on her recent split with Columbia Records, noting that they parted on “good terms” after she realized she couldn’t be on a major label because “I can’t function normally… and the normal promo things don’t work for me.”
And, if once again you’re wondering where her long-awaited next album is, Grimes said she’s sitting on a completed LP that, frankly, she’s just “really bored” with at the moment. “It’s like two years old and I’m starting to make new things,” she said.
Listen to the interview below.
It’s an accomplishment for an artist to partner with a swanky fashion house, yet a next-level achievement is unlocked by designing a collection one’s self, from inspiration to garment. For Steven Zhu, better known as Grammy-nominated producer ZHU, the feat has been reached with the debut of his rave culture-inspired NIGHTDAY fashion line.
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This past March, ZHU hosted a private preview to those in the merchandising world in his showroom at the California Market Center in downtown Los Angeles. This past Friday, he opened this same showroom to fans for the first public viewing of the line. The entirely self-funded collection is designed by ZHU himself, in collaboration with his former creative director and fashion designer Emmy Slattery, who’s also worked with electronic-centric artists and brands including Monolink, Lightning In a Bottle and Production Club.
Soon, the collection will be sold through select boutiques and retailers. While pricing is not yet set, tags will be high-end, in line with other luxury brands. (You can see exclusive images of NIGHTDAY below.)
Though the NIGHTDAY collection was previewed at his 2022 EDC Las Vegas – where ZHU performed while hosting a live fashion show on a specially constructed runway – it’s been a project at least seven years in the making.
“I’m a pretty visual person. I’m very inspired by rave culture; this is something that I’ve been a part of, I’m embedded in,” says the L.A.-based multi-hyphenate. “I feel like my style has just now become influential in a way where I’ve been finally able to get the ideas from my head to a pen to silhouettes to being on a body to those bodies being in person and people seeing them.”
The NIGHTDAY line is named after his 2014 debut EP, The Nightday. ZHU says at the time of the project’s release, “Nobody knew who I was, and it was very much about the club and dance floor.” This underground essence still plays a significant factor in his artistry – from music to clothing. Nodding at underground club culture, the NIGHTDAY collection is comprised of mostly all-black fits — from logo-free tees and hoodies to luxe leather duffles. The line focuses on the intersection of functionality and style, a flex as neither component is compromised on the dance floor.
“It’s about paying homage to the club. I’m an artist who came through the club originally by being a producer and DJ and making people dance, to evolving into somebody who is writing music and now playing at festivals and arenas,” he says. “As I’m taking this little piece of the club culture into a larger audience, I don’t want those people to forget where the fundamental origins came from — and what I’m doing with fashion is another way to tell that story.”
He cites Yohji Yamamoto, Rick Owens and Alexander McQueen as the designers and fashion houses he most admires, with the understated designs of Bottega Veneta and Prada also serving as inspiration. True to ZHU’s aesthetic, NIGHTDAY is the epitome of minimalist chic meets gritty nightlife with clean hemlines juxtaposed with glitzy fabrication.
ZHU recalls witnessing the fusion of dance music with high fashion over five years ago at the Kris Van Assche Dior Homme Autumn/Winter 2017 show and seeing a way he could elevate the effort.
“It was all rave inspired, but they weren’t booking the DJs or taking parts of the culture and putting it into their plan. I was frustrated,” ZHU says. “In hip-hop, you have artists and designers coming together in fashion and people sitting there at shows, and culturally, it’s integrating. But I feel like that’s not the case with dance music and fashion. So, a big part of this is that I can bring a bit of the culture into fashion. Hopefully, both sides can play off each other and create something exciting beyond just me.”
Bucking the cycles and seasons customary to the fashion world, ZHU aims to bend the rules by adopting a more spontaneous approach with NIGHTDAY. He mentions timing as a critical component of his decision to pursue fashion.
“You could have the best thing, but it is at the wrong time, and no one will care. Then, you could have the wrong thing, but if it’s at the right time, everybody will care,” he says. “So, I try to stay tapped into what I’m feeling on the ground level and what the streets are feeling, then move in that way.”
Jason Renaud
Jason Renaud
Jason Renaud
Jason Renaud
When the sun goes down on the first Friday of Coachella, an electrifying energy surges from the desert field. Shaking off the heat from the sun, festival goers reignite for the day as the grounds visually light up around them. Palm trees and art pieces glow, and crowds flow from stage to stage like moths pursuing light.
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In the Gobi, a large tent lined with chandeliers, a crowd has gathered, entranced by a cube of LED screens blacked out with turquoise text that reads, “Hello… I am Whyte Fang.”
Following this introduction, the set rumbles to life, jumping from experimental bass to techno to elements of trance and drum ‘n bass. A mix of Whyte Fang originals from her recently released Genesis album make up a majority of the hour, from the wobbling “333” to the punchy “Transport God.” In a highlight moment, Brooklyn rapper Erick the Architect, one of the album’s few collaborators, joins Whyte Fang on stage for a live rendition of “SCREAM.”
A collage of visuals flirt between the futuristic and the bizarre – a swirl of swiveling robotic eyes pulse in time with the beat before transforming into a swath of glittering snakes, then butterflies, then spiders that scuttle across the screens. We see flashes of a blacklight-lit figure outlined in neon: neon embellishments glow in her hair, on her jacket, her sleeves, her pants, and most prominently, in an X on her exposed pregnant belly.
Whyte Fang never picks up the microphone to speak to the crowd, communicating only through a vocoded voice and text on the stage’s screens. Besides occasional glimpses of the neon-adorned figure at the decks, the artist is mainly represented by an illustrated head with long hair and fairy-like ears who makes several appearances throughout the show visuals. Leading up to the show, the Whyte Fang project reportedly experienced a 2,000% bump in streaming on Spotify.
While Whyte Fang may have felt the need to introduce herself at Coachella, to most, she is already well known as her alter-ego Alison Wonderland, the Australian producer who’s become a superstar of the electronic scene, playing the world’s biggest dance music festival, becoming a regular at storied venues like Colorado’s Red Rocks (where she breezily sold out two nights in a row in 2022) and scoring a pair of No. 1 LPs on Top Dance/Electronic Albums.
As Alison Wonderland, the artist born Alex Scholler also earned the title as the highest billed female DJ in Coachella’s history. Since then, she has continued to reign as a coveted headliner on festival lineups, like this month’s EDC Las Vegas, where she’s set to perform for the last time in the foreseeable future, as she is currently eight months pregnant with her first child. (The father is her longtime partner, director Ti West.)
Flash forward two weeks after Coachella, and Scholler has exchanged her neon Whyte Fang look for her more signature oversized t-shirt and sweatpants. In the comfort of her L.A. home , she sits on her couch with her fluffy black dog, Molly. Over a takeout order of veggie dumplings from Din Tai Fung (an L.A. favorite for soup dumplings and Taiwanese eats, and her latest pregnancy craving), she shares that her mom recently came to visit from Australia to see her perform at Coachella and help her prepare a room in her house for the baby, who’s set to arrive in a few weeks.
“If I drink some water, you might be able to feel some kicking,” Scholler says with a smile, chugging a gulp of water to demonstrate. At eight months pregnant, it’s a cherished moment of calm. Her past few months, however, have been anything but. Here, she shares the story of resurrecting Whyte Fang, performing while pregnant, and what the future looks like.
Whyte Fang is obviously such a fully formed concept. What is the project’s origin story?
Whyte Fang was my original production name I had been producing as before I ever released music as Alison Wonderland. I was DJing as Alison Wonderland, but the music was coming out as Whyte Fang. I really wanted to have no face. I already felt judged for how I looked and how I presented myself as Alison, and I wanted my music to be taken seriously. Whyte Fang did get some attention back in the day — it was picked up by local radio stations [in Australia] and BBC Radio 1 played me, and I was a finalist in a producer competition. Flume and I were both finalists in that competition actually, and we both lost.
Whyte Fang
Peter Don
Where did you take the project from there?
When I signed as Alison and started releasing music, I always wanted to eventually go back to Whyte Fang — but when I did, I wanted it to be executed exactly how I envisioned it. At the time, I just didn’t have the resources, and didn’t feel experienced enough as a producer to really reach what was in my head. I knew there was a vision and I could see it, but it didn’t feel like the right time.
It finally felt like the right time to shift my focus to Whyte Fang now — I’d done an EP and three albums as Alison Wonderland. I’m not really the face of Whyte Fang, and I’m not really the voice of it either. The music I make with Whyte Fang is darker and more industrial. It’s detached from my personal life. I do make beats like I do with Whyte Fang, even as Alison, but people who have interviewed me in the past have always said those songs sound so different, but it’s not really. Those types of songs just don’t shine because songs with me singing or that are more pop are the ones that shine with my Alison project. So I wanted to give those songs a proper home.
When did you begin focusing on Whyte Fang again?
I’d say it started in a more intense way after I released Loner [in 2022.] Most of the Genesis album was made within the last year.
So, while pregnant?
While pregnant, yes. A lot of the tracks were made while I was pregnant and I was feeling super creative. So many people told me I was going to lose my creativity and I was not going to feel the same, and I was really scared of that. Then as soon as I got pregnant, it felt the opposite.
I hadn’t felt the flow like that in a long time. I had just released an album that was so emotionally heavy, so it felt good to create stuff that was a bit more detached to my personal journey in terms of lyrics and working with other vocalists. I also love working with other vocalists, and I feel like this kind of project is where that makes sense for me.
With Whyte Fang, I just saw it. I knew the colors. I knew Whyte Fang was green and red. I knew what she looked like. I knew when she was performing, I didn’t want to be speaking. When I do the live show, she narrates occasionally. She has her own thing going on that’s greater than us humans, you know?
What went into the preparation for Coachella?
I worked with Tyler [Lamptrees], who does visuals for all my projects. He’s the only person I’ve ever worked with who visually sees what’s inside of my brain. It’s so rare to see something materialize like that when you’ve had such a strong vision. When we started working on the show around August 2020, we didn’t even have Coachella yet. My goal was to get Coachella so I could show people what this was on a bigger, not genre-specific scale. I was so fortunate to get it — but then when I found out I had Coachella, there wasn’t an album finished yet. I thought to myself, “This is what I want to do. I need to finish this body of work.” It was a kick up the butt to really get this album done. I look back and think, “How did I make an entire show and an album while pregnant?” But I did.
Were there any certain things or special accommodations you had to make to adjust to pregnancy through the process?
There were things I was supposed to do, that I didn’t… like rest. I think the best thing I actually did for my pregnancy was to keep living my life and letting the baby cook while living my life. I think it would’ve been a lot more intense for me if I had stopped.
I definitely don’t feel the same while pregnant. I was definitely exhausted at certain points, but I pushed through it because I had this vision that was so strong. If I really did feel like I needed a day off, I would take it, but I just knew this was something I had to finish.
After your Weekend 1 show, a statistic came out about Whyte Fang becoming the biggest-growing Spotify artist at Coachella in advance of their performance, with a 2,000% increase in streams on the service. Can you talk about that?
I never expected that! I was nervous no one would hear it. Every artist feels that, especially when you put a lot of effort and love into something. But this was the best surprise.
I still haven’t processed it properly. The fact that people are listening to an entire album in 2023 means so much to me as well, because I made this as an album. It wasn’t just meant for a single, it’s a journey. Genesis is a journey.
Performing while eight months pregnant with your belly out was such a powerful moment during the show.
I feel like a bad b–ch playing while eight months pregnant. It hasn’t been an easy road for me to become pregnant, so that in itself was a big achievement for me. I’m so proud that I got here. I never thought I would physically be able to become a mother. It’s so special for me, and I want to embrace it and be present in this moment as much as I can.
Whyte Fang
Peter Don
You shared a post recently about how early in your career, people in the industry warned you about becoming a mother and how it could affect your career.
Yeah, I was once told by someone in the music industry that I worked with that he hoped I would never become pregnant because it would ruin my career. Those words have rung so loudly in my ear, especially during these past few months.
It may have been the best thing anyone’s ever said to me, because it made me go, “well f–k you, watch this.” Being pregnant doesn’t define you, it just expands you. Literally. [Laughs.] Becoming a mother and having a family doesn’t define me. I don’t consider it a negative in any way. It’s just an add-on in my life, which is exciting and a new journey.
When I posted that on Instagram, a lot of other artists — big female artists who aren’t even in my genre — responded and said “thank you” and told me that they have also been so scared about wanting to become pregnant, thinking that it might end their career too. A lot of people I was shocked to hear from, because I didn’t even think they’d know who I was. I spoke to Grimes about it, and she was like, “Honestly, it’s punk rock.” And I agree.
You’re set to play EDC in a few weeks, which will be your last show for a while. How are you preparing?
My doctors are a little concerned about it. I’m going to be in and out for the set, and I’ll have a chair ready for me to sit on.
Everyone has been asking me if I’m sure I want to do this — and look, if I can’t because of medical reasons, I won’t fight that. I’m getting checked two days before to make sure. But I love playing music. It brings me joy, it’s not a burden. So being able to do what I love, that doesn’t feel hard to me.
Physically, it’s a lot. There will be no jumping. But again, I have an amazing team that is going to look after me, and Insomniac and EDC have always been super supportive to me and to women in general, so I know I’m in good hands. I am supposed to double in size though, so if you see a waddling bowling ball walking your way, make way.
What’s next? Maternity leave?
For Whyte Fang, I plan to tour the show and more music will come out. I’m taking a few months off and then I’ll be back for Red Rocks in October. I did have to cancel two festivals so I could take a maternity leave, but those were the only two shows I had to cancel. The festivals were incredibly understanding and obviously I look forward to making them up.
I actually found out that I was pregnant the day I played Red Rocks last year, so that will be a very poetic, full circle moment for me. I want to bring the baby to Red Rocks and be like, “This is where it all started for us!”