Stars, Crossed

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Confession – I like a lot of genres of music, with the exception being country; however, the music I listen most to at this point is electronic dance music (EDM).  

I appreciate EDM for several reasons.  For one, it matches my upbeat feelings about this time in my life.  Also, a couple of decades as a DJ in various media forms can burn you out on a lot of traditional hits across most genres of music, but few people want an event or radio station that plays EDM.  It becomes a bit of refuge from the stuff you play for a living.

My enjoyment for EDM has grown over several decades; my SiriusXM preprogrammed stations have a variety of genres, but I tend to gravitate towards a couple of the EDM stations as much as anything.

I think most people would assume that when EDM DJs play live, they go out there and mix together all of their hits, one at a time.  However, it is far from that.  Most DJs have a lot of interesting things they do with their set; yes, they play the hits, but often they have been remixed, mashed up with other songs, and reimagined.  Sometimes, they even test out ideas for the audience or play songs once that they plan on never using again; most famously, French DJ David Guetta played a spin-off of the Eiffel 65 song “Blue” featuring Bebe Rexha in 2017, and the two never planned on doing anything further with it.  Five years later, someone decided to take the snippet he played off of a YouTube video and use it for one of their TikToks; it quickly went viral.  Rexha and Guetta got back together at that point and finished up the song, and “I’m Good (Blue)” became one of the 10 biggest songs of 2023.  

Another common misconception I think people have is that the DJs just keep the music thumping at 130 beats per minute (BPM) nonstop for hours at a time.  However, most of them understand that there needs to be highs and lows with the music, just like any other genre.  No one can go at a steady pace for that long, and the changes in pace make it more excitable.  There’s moments where the beat stops completely, and other moments where they go extremely high-energy.  They’ll even throw in music from different artists and other genres altogether to vary the sound.

One of the great things about being a fan of EDM is that most DJs have figured out that it’s good for their brand to post entire live sets online.  YouTube and Soundcloud are filled with entire shows of them playing live, and there’s a website, 1001tracklists.com, that lists all of the songs they play during those sets; it even notes the moment that each new song starts.  That way, people can go seek out specific mixes of songs they find interesting and seek them out on their streaming service of choice.

A significant culture has grown within EDM.  It is generally seen as young people’s music, but I’ve discovered that there are plenty of people in my age bracket that enjoy it as well; I’ve been to a couple of shows by major artists in the past few years, and there is a full age range of adults and youths at the shows enjoying themselves.

One of the major scenes for EDM in this country exists in Miami, and the city has embraced it.  In 2011, the city began Miami Music Week as an EDM convention of sorts.  At that time, EDM was hitting its peak of influence in the American pop music scene, and Miami had been hosting a dance festival called Ultra in March since 1999; the introduction of Miami Music Week fit well.  At that point, Ultra had grown into one of the major EDM festivals on the planet, attracting many of the major names in EDM to play during the festival.  It began as a one-day event; in 2011, it became a three-day event for the first time, and it drew 100,000 people to the main stage alone.  There are a wide variety of artists that have played at these events, including some artists that don’t fit into the genre at all that play on their stage featuring live instrumentation.

(Interestingly enough, a native of Olean and an OHS grad, Tom Stephan, who goes by the stage name of Superchumbo, has played at the festival at least once, in 2004; he has had a successful career as a DJ, remixing a bunch of different artists.  I really enjoy his music.  He can be found at tomstephan.com.)

I have yet to personally attend the festival, but I have my eyes set on attending in the next year or two.  The music does get out there for people that do not attend the festival, though – they have a live stream that goes all weekend on YouTube; many of the major sets are played in real time on SiriusXM’s BPM channel; and a majority of the sets are uploaded within a day or two to YouTube and Soundcloud pages.

Ultra has a unique vibe in its setup.  A lot of major music festivals are set in a location far away from most of civilization; Ultra sets up at Bayfront Park, located in downtown Miami and (obviously) right on the water.  The live stream and videos from the festival capture the condos and other high rises located hundreds of feet away.  The shows run until midnight on Friday and Saturday, and until 10 PM on Sunday; considering it probably takes the 65,000 people attending on a given day an hour or two to empty out of the park and the area afterwards, it probably makes for an unpleasant Monday morning for nearby residents.  Still, the city embraces the event, which brings people from all over the world.

Since we are in the final weekend of March 2026, the festival is going on this weekend, featuring notable artists such as DJ Snake, Major Lazer, John Summit, and Swedish House Mafia among about 150 artists performing across six stages.  The only time the festival moves to a different weekend is when Easter falls on that Sunday.

Such was the case for Ultra 2016, which had one of the biggest lineups in the history of the event.  This was the lineup from that weekend:

This lineup probably doesn’t jump out at you if you’re a casual music fan, but a bunch of these artists play on the radio, with their hits usually sung by other stars: David Guetta; Zedd; DJ Snake; Martin Garrix; Tiesto; Afrojack; Alok; and Kygo all have hits from the past decade that you’d probably recognize if they played on the airwaves.  Even the side stages had artists with significant followings and hits, including Icona Pop and Deadmau5, who played on the live stage, and the Worldwide Stage, which included Robin Schulz, Marshmello (who actually played in the middle of the day) and KSHMR (the main writer of the Cataracs, known for the song “Like A G6”).

Whenever you have a packed lineup across multiple stages, it is inevitable that you may miss an artist or two that would be great to see.  Ultra 2016 had such a quandary, as two major artists – one group on the verge of becoming major stars, the other already at the apex of the profession – played at the exact same time.  Sometimes, it seems like a choice you accept one way or another, but in retrospect, this would have been a tough blow to miss either of them.

On the Worldwide Stage, a pair of DJs from New York City were making their first scheduled appearance at the festival.  The DJs, Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, got together in 2012, and due to their frequent use of weed at the time, they coined themselves The Chainsmokers.  In 2014, the festival had been held over two consecutive weekends, and on the first weekend, The Chainsmokers were a last-minute replacement for the opening act on Friday on the main stage; at that time, they had just released their debut single for download, and by playing at the very beginning of Day 1, most people were probably not focused on getting in to see their set.

That debut single, “#Selfie”, eventually found its way to #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 just after their initial appearance at Ultra.  While it was a hit, it was also the sort of song that can ruin careers – a gimmicky song that was ridiculous in its nature.  The group admitted later that they actually put the song out as a joke.  The song’s three verses involved a young, self-absorbed woman talking over the beat about being out at a club, badmouthing fellow patrons, and worrying about how her latest posts on Instagram (hence the title) make her look for a guy she’s pretending not to be interested in but keeps hooking up with.  Every verse ends with a reference to her taking a selfie.  It was accompanied by a video that featured a bunch of selfies sent by listeners in between shots of them performing at a club; several notable celebrities appeared in the video, including Snoop Dogg and David Hasselhoff.   It was a fun song, but it was compared to the song “Harlem Shake” by Baauer, which had blown up for its use in a bunch of viral videos the year before.  That is the sort of song that could have easily made the group a minor blip on the pop radar.  

In 2016, they had developed a more significant fan base.  They released their debut EP, Bouquet, in October 2015.  The lead single from the EP, “Roses”, a more traditional electropop song, had come out in June and had peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 at the beginning of 2016, helping to build the hype around them.  They also had released a song in August 2015 with Dutch DJ Tiesto called “Split (Only U)”, which had lifted a sample from a 2004 Ashanti song; they turned it into a dance anthem that was eventually played before every match at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

The Chainsmokers had also developed a reputation for a wild stage presence.  The two of them were known for jumping all over during performances, including taking turns diving into the crowd; they admitted to enjoying the party scene as well.  This was all leading to a potential breakout for the group on the horizon.

Their appearance in the 10 PM Saturday slot on the Worldwide Stage was absolutely that sort of moment.  They had actually been offered a set earlier in the day on the Main Stage, but felt that the side stage would bring out a more intimate feel and attract fans more dedicated to being there to see them.

I did not watch the livestream, but happened upon it a couple days later as a thumbnail next to another video from the festival that I had been watching (I’m pretty sure it was Tiesto).  I often used music as a background while I worked on projects in the process of getting my master’s degree; this set totally distracted me from getting anything done.

They started their 59-minute set with the instrumental and a lyric from “Roses”, and quickly broke out in a million directions with the music.  They played virtually every song from their EP, including a ballad, “New York City”; the hook would later be used by Alicia Keys on the Fivio Foreign / Ye 2022 hit “City Of Gods”.  Most of the songs from that EP never became notable, but they sprinkled those songs in between a bunch of music from artists you would know from all of sorts of places in music, including Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Blink 182, Travis Scott, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Drowning Pool, all while Drew screamed different things along with the music (featuring a ton of obscenities) to keep the energy up.  There was a political statement that was free of vulgarities, lasted all of four seconds, and relatively innocuous, given the culture of politics in this country today; it was not a major distraction, and the set continued without any further attention to it.  They jumped on top of the table that held the mixing equipment and danced around, seeming to enjoy every moment.  With the last six minutes of the set (those set times are pretty tightly regulated by the management of the show), they slowed the tempo down with the song Drew called his favorite ever, Coldplay’s “Yellow”, followed by a medley of mixes of their new single with singer Daya, “Don’t Let Me Down”, to end the set.

The crowd appeared to eat the set up, and fans were shown singing along with every tune they knew.  The video has since been watched almost 15,000,000 times on YouTube and has over 98,000 likes.

That hour may not have been the clincher for the band in becoming stars, but in the next six months, they joined the stratosphere of pop music.  “Don’t Let Me Down”, a song they originally wrote for Rihanna, only to have her reject it, hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 within weeks of the show, was the 8th-biggest single of the entire year, and was eventually certified Diamond (meaning it sold 10,000,000 units in the US).  The follow-up single, “Closer”, featuring Halsey, hit #1, sold 15,000,000 units and ended up being the 4th-biggest single of the entire decade.  In 2019, they became the highest-paid DJs in the world, according to Forbes.

Meanwhile, on the main stage across the park, Swedish DJ Avicii played a set of his biggest hits to a packed crowd.  Avicii had broken through to the American mainstream over the past decade, with his 2011 Grammy-nominated single “Levels”, complete with a sample of Etta James’s vocals from “Something’s Got a Hold on Me”, helping him rise to stardom. 

Avicii was not a classically-trained musician; instead, he pieced things together.  Despite his lack of formal training, he became well-respected throughout the music industry and worked with several superstars, including Coldplay, Madonna, Incubus, and Imagine Dragons.

Avicii acknowledged that he had a hard time dealing with fame.  He was known for being a heavy drinker; he was hospitalized for a time during 2012 with acute pancreatitis after an extended time on the road.  He had been diagnosed with anxiety as a child, and battled issues with his mental health throughout his career, largely due to feeling pressure to provide great music for his fans.

Avicii was particularly crushed by the response to his performance as the headliner in 2013 at Ultra.  Halfway through his Sunday night closing set, he cut the turntables and brought out a group of musicians that played music from his upcoming album True using live instrumentation.  The album was influenced by his recent time living and producing in Nashville, and incorporated elements of bluegrass and traditional country music.  The crowd was confused by the abrupt change, and some even booed at the end of his set.  This was extremely distressing for him, and a lot of people in the music industry took note; however, when the new music became available for the masses, it was widely hailed as his best work.  His smash hits “Wake Me Up” featuring Aloe Blacc and “Hey Brother” with Dan Tyminski became Billboard Top 20 singles, and they still get spins on radio stations of multiple genres to this day.  

He had warmer receptions to his sets at Ultra’s 2014 and 2015 events, but he had been struggling on multiple fronts at that time.  The pain caused by his bout with pancreatitis had been treated with OxyContin and Vicodin; he became addicted due to being prescribed heavy doses, leading to a stint in rehab in 2015.  His health, combined with his heavy touring schedule and the demands of fame, had worn him to a point where many of his contemporaries had expressed concern for his wellbeing.

Nonetheless, Avicii put on a great performance at Ultra 2016.  Unlike The Chainsmokers, Avicii did not grab the microphone to help the crowd get into the set; he instead allowed his music to tell the story by itself.  His set was lower-energy and hinted at a tinge of personal sadness, but was a great performance nonetheless; he led with his new single, “Without You”, and spun his biggest hits along with a slew of new demos throughout his 53-minute set.  He closed the show with his smash collaboration with Coldplay, “A Sky Full of Stars”.  It was a simple set, but greatness does not always require fanfare.

Ten days after this set, Avicii announced he was retiring from touring due to his health issues.  He performed live one final time at Ushuaia, the iconic beach venue in Ibiza, Spain, on August 28, 2016.  He continued to work on music for the next 18 months after ending his time on the road, with reports of at least 200 demos existing from that period.  Unfortunately, Avicii continued to struggle, and passed away on April 20, 2018 in Muscat, Oman.  He was 28 at the time of his death.

Avicii remains a legend in the world of EDM to this day.  There is a museum dedicated to him by his parents in his hometown of Stockholm, Sweden, that opened in 2021.  The largest spherical building on Earth, originally known as the Stockholm Globe Arena, was renamed Avicii Arena in 2021.  Additionally, numerous DJs continue to play sets dedicated to him, eight years after his death, and often feature “A Sky Full of Stars” as the centerpiece of the tribute.  

Both artists may have moved beyond Ultra – Avicii in retirement and death; The Chainsmokers becoming so big of stars that they no longer play festivals – but the legacy of these performances remain with the masses.  The idea that we can listen to these sets ten years later once seemed unlikely during the days of mix tapes; thankfully, modern technology allows these moments to live on and be enjoyed long after the moment ended.