By Allison Kugel
David Guetta has become a music impresario, churning out beat banging, genre-busting pop songs that have been topping the charts for nearly a decade with mega-hits like Titanium featuring Sia; Where Them Girls At featuring Flo Rida and Nicki Minaj; Club Can’t Handle Me featuring Flo Rida; Who’s That Chick featuring Rihanna and I Gotta Feeling featuring The Black Eyed Peas. Guetta is the King of Collabs. His creative input on a song almost assures chart-topping status and his fans have dubbed his music, “Guetta-blasters,” an homage to his bold immersion into hip-hop culture, and his constant and effortless ability to blend hip-hop and pop music with an addictive beat.
Born in France to liberal intellectuals who shunned materialism, Guetta says he yearned for a more glamourous life, which he soon discovered in Europe’s underground club scene where he began deejaying as a teenager. He also fell in love with all things American, as he described to me, delving into American books, movies and music, and yearning to conquer the stateside music scene.
During our conversation, we discussed his seventh, yes seventh, studio album, simply titled, “7.” It’s an eclectic, genre-fluid collection of emotionally charged lyrics and hypnotic melodies. Of course, the album is full of Guetta’s famous collaborations with the likes of Sia, Jason Derulo
Allison Kugel: Was your creative vision, of merging electronic dance music with urban music, there from the start, or did it evolve into that because of the opportunities that came your way?
David Guetta: This may sound crazy, but when I was a kid and I began deejaying, there was no electronic music (laughs). When I was a teenager I was playing funk, and then I went to hip-hop and then house music. That’s why for me, it’s kind of natural because I come from this culture. Then I just moved to a different style, and one day I was able to merge them together. I love music, in general. I like to create emotions with my music, and I like to make people dance.
Allison Kugel: You’re the first deejay I’ve seen that has been able to transcend, not just across various musical genres, but you have been able to get to the point where you’re considered a mainstream recording artist in your own right. How did you create this space for yourself that really didn’t exist before?
David Guetta: Exactly! That’s what is so interesting to me. The world is a certain way, the music industry is a certain way, and if you want to be part of a certain “family,” you’re told, “This is the way things are done.” To me, you don’t have to follow those rules. I created my own rules. At that time, I was extremely criticized for this. And then everybody did the same. I want to create my own rules, basically. That’s how I have always been doing it, and that’s how I’m doing it now. I just finished my album (7, out September 14th), and it’s very eclectic.
Allison Kugel: Yes, it certainly is. Every song on your new album has a completely different sound and emotional tone to it. From your perspective, is there any one theme that ties the album together?
David Guetta: This album is called 7. It is my seventh album, but the number seven also represents the end of a cycle; a week is seven days, the creation of the world in the bible is seven days and my birthday is on [November 7th]. That number is
Allison Kugel: Is there a difference for you, when it comes to collaborating with male artists versus female artists? Do you take a different approach?
David Guetta: Not really. Sometimes I will write with a male artist and we will have a female artist sing it. This happens a lot or even the other way around. If you want to go higher in the notes, of course, you would do that with a female artist. Also, you’re not going to necessarily tell the same story in the music with a male artist versus female, even though things are changing, and I love this (laughs)! I think that things are a little bit less stereotyped right now.
Allison Kugel: Tell me about this special creative synergy that you and Sia share?
David Guetta: It’s incredible because first, we have a
Allison Kugel: You like the contrast of blending dark and light feelings into your musical collaborations.
David Guetta: Exactly, and it’s just like that with movies I like to watch. If you see an action movie, and all they’re doing is shoot, shoot, shoot; bang, bang, bang, it’s stupid and boring. If you have an action movie, but there is also a love story in there, it works better. With music, it is the same.
When you study music theory and different types of melody and core percussion, they teach you that people want to have seventy-five percent of an experience of hearing something that is familiar to them, and twenty-five percent maximum of feeling excited by hearing something new. This is really a precise number. It’s interesting, when you listen to a certain core percussion you need the last chord to feel good, and it’s the same when you go back to the first chord. In between the first and the last chords, you can afford to be more experimental. But if you were to add one chord after the other in a sequence that no one ever heard before, it’s very rare that it would work. People need a little bit of excitement and they need their familiarity.
Allison Kugel: What spiritual philosophy do you subscribe to? And how does it impact your work?
David Guetta: I’m a very happy person, and I’m trying to share this with the world. I’m trying to share my passion for music with the world, and I’m trying to bring people together. I think there are two things that bring people together, and that is sports and music. At a Football
Allison Kugel: I read that your father was a Sociologist. Did his studies and his work have any impact on your life
David Guetta: It’s funny because my parents were very, very left. And because it was the 1960s, they were hippies. Of course, being a hippy at that time was very common. I was raised like this. So, for me, being rebellious was saying, “I want to be an entrepreneur and I want to make money. I don’t want to be like you guys.” (Laughs) I was also super pro-America, and I was only watching American movies and listening to American music.
Allison Kugel: What about things like picking up your father’s philosophies on any social causes, or on human behavior; things like that?
David Guetta: You know, I really hadn’t thought about it. Now that you mention it, I would say a lot of the advice I was given stuck with me. Things like believing and treating everyone as equal, and just a certain way of navigating the world, without me even realizing it.
Allison Kugel: What is the difference, culturally, between how your music is received in Europe versus in the states?
David Guetta: It’s extremely different. There was this magic moment in my career where I brought people together and opened doors for this kind of music in the U.S., with songs like I Gotta Feeling (with the Black Eyed Peas), Club Can’t Handle Me (with Flo Rida) and music like that. It was a special moment of pop music that transcended genre, around 2009, 2010 and 2011. Now, in the U.S., it’s mainly hip hop. Among the biggest deejays in Europe, I am probably the one that is in the middle, culture-wise. The bigger deejays in Europe could probably not be as successful in the U.S. Hip-hop has absorbed every culture there was, in the United States. Hip-hop stars are the new rock stars in the U.S. They act like it and they dress like it. They don’t use the old hip hop codes; they use the rock n’ roll codes. I think that kids who would have in the past been into rock or alternative music, those same kids today are into hip-hop. They relate to that rebellious, provocative culture. I think it’s very interesting how they absorbed this. In Europe, if you want to be cool and different, you would likely be into underground dance music.
Photo Credits: Joseph Abound (album cover), Guerin Blask, Ellen von Unwerth
David Guetta’s seventh studio album, 7, is out September 14th. Pre-order at iTunes and at https://davidguetta.lnk.to/Album7?ref=https%3A//t.co/B2tsQPCnog. Follow on Twitter @davidguetta.
Allison Kugel is a syndicated entertainment columnist and author of the book, Journaling Fame: a memoir of a life unhinged and on the record. Follow her on Instagram @theallisonkugel and at AllisonKugel.com.
Also, check out: Allison’s interviews with Lenny Kravitz and Gwen Stefani.