In an article on Huffington Post Canada, Deadmau5 shares his thoughts on the current state and future of EDM. Despite having spoken about the subject on numerous occasions, his comments have yet to grow stale.
Zimmerman focuses on the cyclical nature of music in relation to dance music and predicts EDM will die out just like all popular music before it — likening it in particular to rap-rock. “I’m not just applying this to EDM, I’m applying this to popular culture. Things come and go, wax and wane, ebb and flow,” says Zimmerman. Although he’s not writing it off just yet, giving its expiration a few more years.
As for the the current state of EDM he complains — as many others have — about its stagnancy and lack of innovation:
“I think a big problem with EDM right now – and I mean right now, I don’t mean fucking last year or two years ago, I mean right fucking now – is that there’s a lot of safe betters and they all want to do this safe bet thing. And that’s [what] will kill it off before anything. And it’s not the listener’s fault and it’s not the producers’ fault. You guys can go back and forth all you want about how ‘We always have to make the same music because it’s popular, it’s what the kids want.’ The kids are like ‘Can you stop making the same fucking shit over and over again?’ You’re never going to win that argument. The responsibility is the risk-taking to start pushing it.”
He does, however, give credit to the usual suspects and also an unlikely one. Zimmerman cites Avicii and Skrillex as artists engaging in the innovation he finds lacking within EDM as a whole. “Avicii’s taking risks. That’s actually admirable. I’m not going to fucking shut the kid down for making something completely fucking different because that’s actually what you need to do with music right now,” he says.