How David Guetta became the biggest DJ in the world

How David Guetta became the biggest DJ in the world

26 October, 2011 | 6.57AM

• Written by: Kirsty Kane
• Filed under: Music News: david guetta, interview

Amongst David Guetta’s DJ possessions you will find a pair of headphones that he helped design for Beats, Dr. Dre’s audio gear company, a wallet of CDs with hand-written titles, and a notepad and pen. Arguably, it is the last two items that hold the key to his monumental success.

And what a success it is. David Guetta is truly the biggest DJ the world has ever seen (and not just because DJ Magazine crowned him No.1 DJ in the world last week). The numbers speak for themselves. Twenty-five million Facebook fans, two million Twitter followers, and over half a billion views on YouTube. (He is one of the most watched people on planet Earth.) He sells millions of records. He DJs in stadiums of up to 80,000 people. Somehow, “superstar DJ” doesn’t quite sum it up.

How did he get here? Guetta says he has spent his whole career searching for the perfect dance beat. His perseverance in the studio has made him one of the most in-demand producers on the planet. His collaborations with hip-hop’s biggest stars have certainly helped his profile, particularly in the US. But it is his famous perfectionism, embodied by the fact that he never DJs without his notepad and pen, that is the engine of his success.

“David loves studying how his audience reacts to his music,” says his manager of nine years, Caroline Prothero. “He constantly tests new tracks out on a dancefloor, watches how they work, and scribbles down notes which he later uses to perfect his productions in the studio. For him, it’s all about finding those emotional triggers.”

“As a producer and a DJ, I’m always trying to do more with less,” says David Guetta. “I never want to base my songs or tracks on productions tricks, but at the same time I want my music to be as effective as possible.”

Guetta does have a bit of an unfair advantage. Because he plays to huge audiences multiple times per week, he is uniquely able to study exactly what build-ups, breakdowns, melodies, and basslines generate the most emotional impact. There are probably only a handful of DJs in the world that are able to conduct audience surveys on such a huge scale.

“Playing those big stadium gigs totally affected me,” he says. “When you’re faced with moving 80,000 people in a football stadium, that is a totally different challenge to a few thousand people in a club.

“My usual club sets consist of two parts - the first part is my big records and the second half is where I will usually move into a tunnel of music. In a club, I can loop something and play for five minutes with that loop working in FX and filters, but you can’t do that in a stadium. It would fall flat.

“Big audiences require more energy. A stadium show is all about big energy – it’s difficult to put a large crowd into a trance by playing hypnotic music.

“When you have to play a two hour set in front of a massive audience you’re obliged to focus on what is the most efficient, what is going to kill the dancefloor.” He says, “It’s about creating that magic moment when 40,000 people become one.”

The fact that there are so many different styles, sounds, levels, and sensibilities; that is what makes electronic music so strong.

You can hear how those stadiums affected Guetta on the electronic half of his new album Nothing But The Beat. (His double album has two halves, one for his collaborations and songs, and one for purely electronic instrumentals.) With huge musical crescendos and euphoric climaxes all 10 tracks are just the right thing for the main stage.

There is also a distinct lack of intro and outro beats. Instead most tracks begin at the start of build-ups or main hooks and generally end on a musical high. The rhythms are simplified too - 808-inspired house and electro beats provide the album’s core for the most part - with each new beat propelling the listener and dancefloor forwards.

“Of course those big gigs influenced me as a producer,” says Guetta. “It made me go to a point, by always forcing me to focus on the main idea, the main spark, behind a song. What makes people react the most?”

For Guetta, it comes down to the melody. “The main idea of my music is to make people dance and to make them emotional at same time,” he says. “Of course, because it’s club music, the way it is mixed down, the kick, and the beats, this is all important, but it is the melody that makes records stand out.

“At least, this is true for my audience. There are other DJs out there who are very successful at what they do, like Luciano for example, who can really smash up a big dancefloor by playing hypnotic music and by creating a hypnotic vibe. However from my experience, I just don’t think that sound can work in a stadium.”

All of this explains why David Guetta sounds the way he does, and perhaps why underground techno sounds good in basements, old factories, and warehouses. The environment that a DJ plays in, and the size of his or her audience directly affects their studio sound. As Guetta’s crowds and gigs have continued to mushroom in size, so too has his sound become bigger and more effective at moving those large masses of bodies. It is his self-fulfilling prophecy.

Regardless of his success as a producer, Guetta is quick to insist that he is still a DJ at heart.

“It’s actually quite incredible that I’m not really doing anything that different to what I was doing when I was 17,” says the 43-year-old. “I started my career playing records at a small club in Paris, before the emergence of house music. Back then, I played a mixture of new wave and funk, and in a way that is what I’m playing now.”

And despite him introducing electronic music to a wider global audience, he doesn’t see himself as an ambassador. “I have never wanted to speak for the scene,” he says. “Of course, I’ve opened some doors and helped get more exposure for electronic music, but our scene would still be strong regardless of this.

“What gives us our strength, is that we have people like me, but at the same time, we have a huge and exciting underground movement. Both sides of the scene cross over to one another and that is healthy. The fact that there are so many different styles, sounds, levels, and sensibilities; that is what makes electronic music so strong.”

Naturally, given his commercial success, David Guetta has his critics in the scene. After all, electronic music has always done a fine job of cutting the head off any of its brood that rises above the parapet.

He admits, “The hardest challenge of my career has been trying to find that balance between the pop and DJ world. It’s very difficult because in club music, the less chord changes you have the better. On the radio, it’s the exact opposite. Dance music is all about hypnotism, whereas pop is all about emotion. So trying to bridge those two sounds has been very, very difficult.”

Whatever you think of his music, there is no denying that David Guetta has helped introduce many more people to electronic music, which is ultimately beneficial to the whole scene. Where he goes from here, no doubt, somewhere in the pages of his trusty notepad, it is written.

Get David Guetta’s music on Beatport here.

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