Opinion: Why Our Scene Needs EDM Now More Than Ever Before

Last June, electronic mega promoter Insomniac launched Flashback , an EDM throwback party. Regardless of what anyone might say about that music, it catalyzed a unique kind of joy on the dance floor. Those tracks with the kind of larger-than-life synths and expert songwriting inflated your pupils even if you were completely sober and turned everyone around you into your best friend.

Now, respected artists are reviving the sound. “With Your Love,” one of the bass titan ILLENIUM’s singles for his new album, Odyssey, is pure EDM. Ninajirachi, who just won an ARIA for Best Solo Artist, describes her sound as “girl EDM.” Frost Children took Modeselektor-style punk vocals and put them over high-flying EDM beats, and they describe it as their "dream genre."

As we see these musical signs of an EDM resurgence (which is no surprise given the generally dreadful state of the world), I feel a longing for the core principles of EDM culture. I started raving during that era, and not only did the music inspire my very successful career as a journalist, but it also stereotypically inspired a lot of personal growth. I learned about kindness, authenticity, and community at those raves. 

Overall, it was a wondrous time for dance music, which fueled so much creativity and individual expression. That’s what the scene needs right now. Badly. 

To clarify, EDM stands for “electronic dance music,” but its definition has expanded over the last 15 years or so. EDM is the style associated with the genre’s integration into American popular culture starting in the early 2010s. Big, grand synth hooks. DJs with celebrity appeal. Enormous stages. Bottle service clubs.

I bet numerous people reading that description scrunched up their faces in disgust (ironic that I’d make the same face upon the arrival of a ballistic EDM drop). As someone who came up during that time and has been documenting dance music ever since, I am familiar with all the hate. 

Vitriol for EDM came from every direction. Major publications. Network TV shows. Dance originators. Op-Eds written by journalists who would later become my friends. From my extensive studying of the topic, however, much of this hate was attached to the cultural shift towards the mainstream, and nothing more.

General ravers in the scene before didn’t like that ticket prices were going up or that the dance floors were getting more crowded with people who were learning the ropes (even though everyone was learning the ropes at some point). Besides, there are still complaints that too few people are dancing. 

To that brand of hater, I deliver the reminder that the underground never died. There were and are still so many dark, sweaty rooms filled with pounding, esoteric beats and a small group of people. Many of these rooms ban the use of phones, too. Anyone in LA can hit my line (IG tag at the bottom), and I’ll point you in the right direction. 

But even beyond the general ravers, the mainstream element catalyzed distaste. Legendary rock star Tom Petty said to USA Today in 2014: "Watch people play records? That's stupid. You couldn't pay me to go. I don't think it would be any fun without the drugs. It's a drug party."

Plenty of people were taking drugs and watching other people play records when Petty was at the height of his career in the '80s and '90s. Would he have talked shit about the culture then? Maybe not. But he became aware of it because of the massive popularity EDM brought to dance music.

I note the association between EDM hate and the mainstream quality, because other than the general disdain and discomfort that results from something niche becoming known, there isn’t much of a narrative around the hate besides personal taste. Other topics, like diversity, were issues long before EDM and remain issues today.

For the most part, EDM brought positive elements to the scene, and I will dive into two of them: crowd and music.

Regardless of any outlier bad apples (who have been in the scene since the beginning), EDM was so new and exciting that the general tone of the crowd was wondrous. An entirely new population was discovering an unexplored world. One where you can express yourself exactly as you want: through dance, fashion, crafting, and any other method (a lot of people started writing about their experiences and formed new publications).

Speaking personally, as an EDM kid, having the confidence to wear what you want and dance your heart out puts you in an amazing mood, which makes you a good member of the crowd and community at large. 

After all, EDM music supported that kind of expression. These gargantuan tracks were uplifting, euphoric, delivering unfiltered positivity, both literally through lyrics and figuratively through the major chords and pentatonic melodies. 

The songs that didn’t have that pleasant quality had the kind of crazy noises that made Skrillex and Martin Garrix famous. To this point, I would refer to something Moby, who has more of a right to speak on electronic music than pretty much anyone, told me once:

“The wonderful thing about dance music is, I mean, there are many wonderful things, but one is that you can have big success with strange tracks. That Martin Garrix song, "Animals," (2013) is a weird track that got billions of plays.”

During the EDM years, artists were not afraid to make music that was weird as fuck. Just like with the attendees, there was a new sense of wonder happening in production. Young artists were using modern technology without regard to what came before. When I interviewed Kaskade a couple of months ago, we talked about how when he first listened to Skrillex’s Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites (2010), he had never heard sounds like that before.

EDM brought creativity to the other side of the equation as well: songwriting. All those mega tear-jerking tracks had songs beneath them…original songs. “Clarity” (2012), Zedd’s breakout hit and another major contribution to EDM’s pop dominance, was performed with a choir and orchestra at Coachella 2025. Such a transfer between seemingly opposite formats simply could not work if there wasn’t a core song beneath any production.

Over the last few years, the most popular forms of dance music have generally fallen into two categories: bassline-driven tech house and dance covers of popular songs. Tech house was undergoing similar hate as EDM a few years back, and while I maintain that dance music culture was still strong, EDM employs much more intricate songwriting. 

Consider one of the touchpoints for the tech house trend: “Stop It” by Fisher. There is a four-to-the-floor beat, a bassline, a low-pass-filtered vocal hook, and a foghorn on the drop. There is no chorus, verse, melody, or chord progressions, all of which are key elements of any song, including “Clarity.”

Covers like Hugel’s Afro House version of Sister Nancy’s “Jamaican (Bam Bam)” or Fezzo’s House version of “Kids” by MGMT obviously have a level of songwriting, but it’s not their own. They’re borrowing it from someone else. The songs weren’t written specifically for those epic, emotional dance floor moments. It’s the difference between a rave and a karaoke bar.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with spending an evening at a karaoke bar with your mates. But raves offer the potential for such a grander experience. EDM matched that grand quality, which rubbed off on the music and the people in the best way. Artists created with more emotion and adventure. Fans were inspired to become artists, work in the business in some form, or even just be that bit kinder.

My argument isn’t that the EDM era was “better” but rather that we can learn from the past, and EDM taught the rave scene to grow with a sense of wonder and creativity. 

That’s what dance music needs right now.

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Photos by: Rukes