David Guetta Changed Electronic Music Ten Years Ago, And He's Gearing Up To Do It Again

LAS VEGAS, NV - APRIL 28: DJ David Guetta performs at Intrigue Nightclub's One-Year Anniversary party hosted by Perrier-Jouet at Wynn Las Vegas on April 28, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images for Wynn Las Vegas)

When David Guetta first stepped into the control room of a New York City recording studio to play some previously-unheard tracks for a handful of journalists, something about the man was different. He didn’t look like the same DJ I had seen perform live at shows or in hundreds of photographs throughout the years. His trademark lengthy locks were gone, he had upped his style game and he was, somewhat surprisingly, visibly both nervous and excited to press play on the tunes that would soon be hitting airwaves around the globe.

With a new manager—his career is now partially directed by Scooter Braun, the man who has helped turn Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande into stars, in addition to working with long-time manager Jean Charles Carre—an updated, youthful image and an album on the way, the French electronic production maverick is clearly looking to shake things up, including the landscape of mainstream dance music, which is something he’s done before and intends on doing again.

Dance music has always been a genre that prides itself on pushing forward the hardest. Just as one big name or a newly developed style begins to spread outside of the electronic scene and reach a wider audience, it is quickly replaced by something the world has never heard before, which takes the music in a totally different direction. This is often at odds with the relatively recent introduction of true dance and electronic elements into Top 40 pop, which is much slower to adopt new trends coming from the underground.

Very few artists have been able to straddle both worlds, hitting the top of the charts while maintaining the respect they’ve earned in the dance industry with tastemaking kids, but David Guetta has now been doing just that for well over a decade, and he shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.

“When I started, our music was underground,” Guetta reminisced during a recent studio visit. “There was no such thing as DJ music that would be on the radio.”

The world has this man to thank, at least in part, for dance music finally reaching the masses. Around the start of the decade, he ushered in a new era of pop with hit songs of his own like “Sexy Bitch” with Akon, “Without You” featuring Usher and perhaps most memorably, “Titanium,” which highlighted the incredible vocals and songwriting talents of a still relatively unknown pop oddity by the name of Sia. In addition to his own singles, Guetta also produced for artists like the Black Eyed Peas, giving them their 14-week No. 1 hit “I Gotta Feeling,” and further inundating the public with an all-electro sound.

Ever since that period in time, which Guetta himself calls “magical,” the French DJ has been one of the most highly sought after forces when it comes to creating in the studio and turning it up on stage. His success as a hitmaker and a show-stopping performer has landed him on FORBES’ Electronic Cash Kings list every year in its existence, and this time around he places at No. 7 with $25 million in earnings over the past year. That hefty sum comes primarily from live showings at major festivals and in some of the most exclusive clubs on the planet, where he still goes late into the night like somebody brand new to the decks.

In 2017 alone, Guetta has headlined residencies in both Ibiza and Las Vegas, blending his storied past with what’s new in electronic music. “The only place where I was a resident DJ was Ibiza,” the producer recalled, naming the island “the mecca of dance music in Europe since the really early days of house.”

In Ibiza, fans of the musician can find him at Pacha, perhaps the most respected club on the island. According to Jessie Capaz, the club’s event manager, “David represents what we would say are the four musts for a great and successful act: hard work, big talent, charisma and creativity.” Guetta has been a regular at Pacha for many years, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same old approach every time he returns. The star works with the venue for months to ensure that every staging is different, from the visuals to the music he plays, which changes based on what he’s working on and what is happening in dance culture.

Guetta may have history with Ibiza, but Vegas and music festivals are where DJs at the top of their game are earning the biggest paychecks. Now that Sin City has established itself as a new must-visit locale—completely aside from throwing money away at the craps tables—it’s no sweat for people like Guetta, along with listmates Calvin Harris, Diplo, Zedd and a handful of others, to make the trek into the desert to play for thousands of party-goers.

This year has also seen Grammy-winning Guetta kick off a new album campaign, and fans have been delighted by the flurry of new tunes that have been released. After hitting big in Europe and around the globe with his last album Listen, he is once again looking to conquer the U.S. charts by partnering with some of the biggest artists known to the American public. Earlier in 2017 he dropped “Light My Body Up” with rappers Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne (the combining of urban elements and artists with dance was also something Guetta helped pioneer years back), while recent single “2U” features pop mainstay Justin Bieber.

Those names may help grab the attention of radio programmers, and diehard fans of those vocalists will rush to stream their latest offerings, but in both instances, the man behind the knobs is still looking to push boundaries and create something the world hasn’t yet experienced. That’s tough when working with somebody like Bieber, who has now scored massive hits with many of the most popular DJs in the world.

“I didn't want to do what the other ones had done,” Guetta exclaimed, excited to be speaking about a record he had been fine-tuning for a year that was about to finally hit. “The challenge was to create a new production style, which in this case features a new kind of bounce and a new rhythm.”

In addition to his forward-thinking work with Minaj, Wayne and Bieber—all primarily crafted for popular consumption—recent release “Another Life” with industry favorites Afrojack and Ester Dean was well-received and played on repeat by electronic aficionados, but not many others. It’s not clear yet which of Guetta’s tracks will wind up on an as-yet-untitled full-length album, but the fact that the producer shared them all around the same time shows just how hard he is working to balance the pressures placed upon him by his past successes with the desire to create something fresh.

The drive to continue to innovate, while doing so in a way the masses can get behind and grasp, is what has helped Guetta remain so popular throughout the years, and what has kept him on the Electronic Cash Kings list. Will his experiments in all sounds urban and electro produce another “Titanium”-sized hit? It’s always difficult to predict, but at this point in his incredible career, the man behind it all is willing to take the risk.

“You never know if it's gonna work or not,” he explained. “But at the same time, if you don't follow your heart, you're always going to be frustrated.”

I am a freelance music journalist based in New York City. My byline has appeared in The Huffington Post, Billboard, Mashable, Noisey, The Hollywood Reporter, MTV, Fuse, and dozens of other magazines and blogs around the world. I love following charts and the biggest and most...