David Guetta

Maybe You Should Give British Rap A Chance?

About fifteen million years ago on the Internet (a/k/a at the beginning of January of this year), my friend Skinny Friedman issued an errant tweet claiming something to the effect of, "Grime is going to be big in 2013." Though he was joking (I think?), that got me thinking. I can see where he's comi ... More >>

Five EDM Tracks We'll Be Raging to In 2013

By Cory Garcia Like any other genre, EDM has its canon classics, songs that always get a dance floor moving. Benny Benassi's "Satisfaction," for example, turns 10 in 2013, and DJs still throw it on because people still love it a decade later. There was a lot to love in EDM in 2012, but it would be ... More >>

BLOW YOUR HEAD

Why not start new year’s now?

Avicii - Radio City Musical Hall - 9/26/2012

Avicii Radio City Music Hall Wednesday, September 26 Better than: The Rockettes In the promo video for last night's Avicii show, 52,171 viewers found the producer/DJ walking through the Times Square venue that he would soon play and sitting in the seats around which his fans would soon dance. "I m ... More >>

Live: Skrillex, David Guetta, And The Rest Of Electric Zoo Strike A Pose At Randall's Island

Check out our photo galleries: Electric Zoo Gets Sweaty | The People Of Electric Zoo Electric Zoo Randalls Island Friday, September 1 through Monday, September 3 Better than: This. "You know I know how/ to make them stop and stare as I zone out/ the club can't even handle me right now/ watching y ... More >>

Live: Pepsi Throws A Birthday Party For Michael Jackson; He's Unable to Attend

Bad 25: Ne-Yo, Melanie Fiona, Swizz Beatz Gotham Hall Wednesday, August 29 Better than: an easy hair-burning joke. "You just don't do a Michael song—you try and do the best you can." So said Ne-Yo, dabbing at his forehead, having sweated through his "Smooth Criminal" costume. On screens behi ... More >>

Maya Jane Coles: Say Her Name

The DJ spins into Electric Zoo

Live: LMFAO Get The Prudential Center Party Rocking

LMFAO w/Far East Movement, The Quest Crew, Sidney Samson, Eva Simons and Natalia Kills The Prudential Center Friday, June 29 Better than: You'd expect. The problem with an LMFAO concert, I realize three songs into the LMFAO concert, is that even the biggest of LMFAO fans don't want to hear more th ... More >>

Live: Rebecca & Fiona Play To The Party People At Lavo

Rebecca & Fiona Lavo Thursday, June 21 Better than: The Avicii show at Lavo in January. I'd been watching Swedish DJ duo Rebecca & Fiona play their wrung-out superclub gruel for about an hour and a half at the upscale midtown joint Lavo when a woman tapped my shoulder. I recognized her. She worke ... More >>

EDC 2012: After Canceled Night, EDC Closes Fest With Massive Turnout

See also: EDC Vegas Pulls Plug on Music Due to High Winds Organizers of the second annual Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas declared the three-day party a success , despite high winds that cut its marquee night short on Saturday. Promoters say a whopping 115,000 people were in attendance on Sun ... More >>

EDC 2012: The Underground Has Left The Building

Twenty years after rave culture first entered the American mainstream, the success of a festival like Electric Daisy Carnival makes one wonder: Can electronic dance music retain its warehouse roots and peace, love, unity and respect (PLUR) on this level? EDC, whose organizers claim they sold out th ... More >>

EDC 2012: Calvin Harris Plays CDs of Himself Singing

Dance music is fighting for its soul. The charts are filled with tracks (Rihanna, Flo Rida) that borrow from the ecstatic trance and pulsing grooves of electronic dance music. The last time pop was so infatuated with the dance floor was 1979, the year disco died. This time around fans are more sa ... More >>

EDC 2012: House Music Beef With DJ Sneak Plays Out in Steve Angello's DJ Set

In early spring, a Twitter beef erupted between DJ Sneak, a Chicago house music legend, and Steve Angello, one-third of the DJ supergroup Swedish House Mafia. Sneak called SHM's music "fake shit" and said they "do not play house music" -- as in, real house music. On Friday, in front of a huge crow ... More >>

EDC 2012: Coachella or Electric Daisy Carnival: Which One is Better?

See also: Our Complete Coachella Coverage Dance music is coming to an arena near you: Kaskade will be the first DJ ever to play Staples Center (July 27). And mainstream concert promoters such as Live Nation are diving into the electronic dance explosion. Electric Daisy Carnival, which is being hel ... More >>

Live: Lady Antebellum Cross Genres, Get Gooey At Radio City

Lady Antebellum w/Darius Rucker, Thompson Square Radio City Music Hall Thursday, March 3 Better than: Most things that can actually be described as antebellum. Two years ago, "Need You Now" pushed Lady Antebellum, a soulful country trio with a chart-topping record and single, out of Nashville and ... More >>

Electric Zoo Lineup Announced: Guetta, Axwell, Tiesto (And Maybe-Probably Skrillex?) To Headline

The Electric Zoo, the annual summer-closing EDM fest now in its fourth year, will take place August 31 and September 1 and 2, and the first batch of performers has been announced. The weekend will be headlined by Swedish House Mafioso Axwell (who'll be headlining the Hammerstein Ballroom for part tw ... More >>

N.E.R.D. ALERT

Wonk out at the EMP conference

Girl Gone Mild: Madonna Seems To Be Missing From Her New Single

Forget that the latest song to be released from Madonna's upcoming album MDNA is biting its title from a noxious DVD series run by one of the worst people ever to be hailed as a "celebrity" by American culture (a pretty impressive feat, that); never mind that it rhymes "fire" and "desire" on its pre ... More >>

Oddsmaking: Is The Best Dance Recording Grammy Basically Skrillex's To Lose?

If you think the opinions of critics and passionate fans of rock and rap and pop and country mean nothing to the Grammy Awards, being a dance-music fan widens the gap that much more. Essentially, if you're allergic to bottle service and/or newbs with glow sticks, you're better off crying into your p ... More >>

Live-Blogging The 2012 Grammys: Tributes, Tribulations, Skrillex, And The Return Of Adele

via Cats Who Look Like SkrillexWill this cat win Best New Artist?​Welcome to Sound of the City's liveblog of the 54th Annual Grammys, coming to you live from a couch in Astoria. There are quite a few questions lurking around tonight's ceremony. Will Adele sweep the three major categories in wh ... More >>

How Not To Write About Female Musicians: A Handy Guide

​Maybe it's all that misguided Year of the Woman chatter that dominated year-end roundups, or the slow, agonizing creep of Fashion Week, or the coming apocalypse, but hoo boy has there been a lot of terrible writing about female musicians in the past few weeks. The latest offender is the New Y ... More >>

Radio Hits One: Flo Rida's Accidental Posthumous Tribute To Etta James

The late Etta James remained an active recording artist right up to the end, releasing her final album, The Dreamer, just two months before her death on January 20. But she hadn't been on a Billboard singles chart since the '70s, when a cover of Erma Franklin's "Piece of My Heart" from her 1978 come ... More >>

Live: Avicii Pumps (And Pumps) The Crowd At Lavo

​Avicii Lavo Saturday, January 21 Better than: Sensory deprivation. Anthropologically it was worth it; logistically a lot less so. Arriving to Lavo, on East 58th Street, at 11:45 on Saturday night is risky enough—it's a high-end bottle-service superclub, the kind dance snobs tend to a ... More >>

Drake and The Weeknd Wallow in their Misery

Riding the Bummer

The 11 Most Infuriating Songs Of 2011, No. 4: Brian McFadden, "Just The Way You Are (Drunk At The Bar)"

The Song: Brian McFadden, "Just The Way You Are (Drunk At The Bar)" The Crimes: Setting sexual assault fantasies to the dulcet strains of "Cotton Eyed Joe," as remixed by a David Guetta clone. As has been the case for too many years now, 2011's year-end polls have ended in a wave of proclamations ... More >>

Radio Hits One: How The Whistle Became Pop's Secret Weapon Of 2011

​After Billboard released its 2011 year-end charts on Friday I pored over them, looking for patterns and trends with which I could make sense of the year in pop. If someone asked you to pinpoint "the sound of popular music in 2011," there are countless fads and running themes that you could po ... More >>

Live: Lady Gaga Is Z100's Homecoming Queen At The Jingle Ball

​Z100 Jingle Ball: Lady Gaga, Pitbull, David Guetta, Kelly Clarkson, LMFAO, Gym Class Heroes, Demi Lovato, Foster The People, and Hot Chelle Rae w/Karmin, The Script Madison Square Garden Friday, December 9 Better than: A lump of coal and a "Firework" CD single. To begin, let's run down a f ... More >>

Six Awful Things About Karmin's "Crash Your Party"

​Tonight is Z100's Jingle Ball—headlined by Lady Gaga! with a set by Kelly Clarkson!—and the top-40 station's annual celebration of its playlist's biggest stars will be co-hosted by the duo Karmin, a pair of Berklee-educated musicians from Boston who rose to prominence earlier this ... More >>

2011: The Year Skrillex Got Mentioned In A Lot Of Facebook Status Updates

​The increasingly tentacle-extending social-networking site Facebook has released Memology 2011, a quantification of popular topics discussed on the service. Amy Winehouse's death in August was the seventh-most-discussed news topic of 2011, right behind the royal wedding and ahead of the new C ... More >>

NOT SO SILENT NIGHT

O come all ye faithful to Z100's Jingle Ball

20 Questions Brought Up By The Grammy Nominations

Last night's Grammy nominations show was full of pomp, eyeliner, and people on Twitter becoming very confused. Here's the complete list of nominees; below, 20 questions that we're still wrestling with some 14 hours after the broadcast signed off. 1. "Super Bass": Robbed or totally robbed? 2. Now t ... More >>

Live-Blogging The 2011 American Music Awards: We Could Have Had It All (But Then Adele Had To Go Have A Vocal Cord Hemorrhage)

Welcome to Sound of the City's liveblog of the 2011 American Music Awards, the annual salute to the most popular popular music that exists in the American wild this year. While Lady Gaga and Adele and Beyoncé are absent, this year's show apparently has one performance that will cost $500,000 to pul ... More >>

Live: Electric Zoo Brings PLUR (And Snoop Dogg's DJ Alter Ego) To New York City

The up-and-coming artist known as DJ Snoopadelic. Electric Zoo Randall's Island Sunday, September 4 Better than: Did someone already reference the Labor Day shootings? Eesh. Electric Zoo—the dance music festival that's parts techno, house, trance, disco, bass, "electro," and any other somew ... More >>

Kelly Rowland Gets Down Like That

Resident Advisor, Under Wraps

The website's blowout is about good vibrations, not big names

Live: Torche And Friends Dominate At Music Hall Of Williamsburg

​ Torche w/ Big Business, Helms Alee Music Hall of Williamsburg Wednesday, July 20 Better than: I would say any other metal show, but apparently there were a few other good ones. Last afternoon, with the e-mercury that I assume powers our digital thermometers refusing to recede, the Torche/ ... More >>

What The Lineup For Clear Channel's iHeartRadio Music Festival Says About Radio Formats In 2011

Lady Gaga.​Today the radio behemoth Clear Channel announced a festival celebrating the relaunch of its online service iHeartRadio, which currently allows listeners to tune into the chain's terrestrial-radio outlets from all over the country (as well as about 150 digital-only stations) and whic ... More >>

Live: Katy B Launches Her Mission At Le Bain

Katy B Le Bain Monday, June 27 Better than: Whatever David Guetta's up to right now. Launching British pop stars in the States has been a mostly-miss proposition for labels in the post-Spice Girls era. While retro-soul mashers like Adele and Amy Winehouse have seen success on this side of the At ... More >>

The Voice Keeps The Niceness Quotient High

via Rickey​After the first of its live shows, some real problems have emerged with The Voice. Similar to the last season of American Idol, none of the celebrity panelists is willing to say anything remotely critical, although that reluctance at least makes more sense here because they're suppo ... More >>

American Idol, Season 10, Final 13: Bodies Falling Everywhere

No time even to discuss that shirt. Credit: Frank Micelotta/FOX.​Two hours? Really, American Idol? You needed two hours for a results show? And you were still scrambling to finish it by the end? This show's results episodes are notoriously stretched-out marathons, where 30 seconds' worth of in ... More >>

Q&A: Disco Producer Hans-Peter Lindstrøm On How To Make A Pop Album

​Norwegian disco producer Hans-Peter Lindstrøm is notorious for his extended, drawn-out, cosmic dance tracks. His success lies in never-ending synthed-out grooves that brood without ever hitting a point of explosion--the entire point for his particular brand of space disco. In the past severa ... More >>

K'Naan

Kelis: Mother of the Year

The matriarchal disco diva reinvents herself on Flesh Tone

Summer Guide: Kelis Tries For A Rebound

With her new album Flesh Tone, the "Milkshake" singer tries on some club-pop

Live: Kelis Mixes Bossy And Bass-y At Santos' Party House

Kelis Santos' Party House Wednesday, April 21 Last night's show at Santos proved that Kelis is back and, surprisingly, stronger than ever. After a few years of silence (not so far as the gossip blogs were concerned, of course), the raspy-voiced starlet's "Acapella"--a dance collaboration with Dav ... More >>

Kelis+Maluca

Deer Tick's Wild Year Ends With An Access Hollywood (?!) Co-Sign

​So first the Providence proto-folk band picked up the unlikely endorsement of Brian Williams, kicking off the newsman's "BriTunes" program in a kind of deadpan surrealist interview. Then a cross-dressed John McCauley was a surprise guest on a St. Louis stage, randomly filling in for King Khan ... More >>

Hm, Dr. Dre Will Be DJing at Best Buy Later Today

​This is your new Virgin Megastore in-store, I suppose. The brand new Union Square 24-hour retail outlet will host Dr. Dre, Jimmy Iovine , will.i.am, Major Lazer, and David Guetta for some sort of series of live appearances, starting at 4pm today. Asking "why?" is futile and probably pointless ... More >>

Live: Club-Kid Nostalgia, Raging Hangovers, And Blinding Light Shows at Electric Zoo

David Guetta, with his constituency below. Pics by Puja Patel, more after the jump. While most folks think of Labor Day weekend as a light, end-of-summer compilation of BBQs, final beach trips, and lazy lounging, over 10,000 people instead trekked to Electric Zoo, a huge EDM gathering with over 5 ... More >>

Why We Love Justice (and Shouldn't)

The perils of hyping dance music you can't really dance to